Welcome to the 272nd Forrest Gump chocolate box edition of the Britblog Roundup, the weekly compilation of delights where you are never quite sure what you will find until you have removed the cellophane.

At examiner.com, Andrew Ian Dodge brings us up to date with the latest developments within the Direct Democracy project in US exports tea party movement to UK and elsewhere.

As an ex-pat I am torn between homesickness, yearning for mountains amidst the unrelieved flat monotony of Waffleland, and despair at the relentless tide of encroachments upon freedoms and wholesale abandonment of that once staple British virtue of common sense.  From the safe distance I inhabit, my abiding impression is that Britain ever more closely resembles Airstrip One, a surveillance society complete with Thought Police where the prevailing orthodoxy is rigorously enforced with the connivance of technologies the Stasi could not have imagined in their wildest fantasies (for example the state of the art CCTV cameras which allow operators to listen into casual conversations as well).  Where curtain-twitching and snitching are in the process of being elevated to civic duties thereby severing the few remaining threads of community and solidarity.  Trawling through the columns of even the broadsheets leads me to the uncomfortable conclusion that Britain is sliding down the proverbial slippery slope towards the kind of oppressive, interfering state that it took Central Europe over 40 years and countless personal tragedies (both in terms of wasted potential and as the price of resistance) to rid themselves of.  More worryingly, that the kind of inbuilt safeguards you might expect to accrue from acculturation in a democracy possess all the resilience and durability of the morning dew in the face of the opportunity to combine the pleasures of a new toy with those of meddling in the business of others.

Contemplating the rot that has set in, I was reminded of Piotr Sztompka’s brilliant essay Civilisational Incompetence: The Trap of Post-Communist Societies (Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Volume 22, Number 2, April 1993, pp85-95).  The incompetence referred to in the title is defined as “a complex set of rules, norms and values, habits and reflexes, codes and matrixes, blueprints and formats – the skillful and semi-automatic mastery of which is a prerequisite for participation in modern civilisation” (p88).  He identifies three causal mechanisms to blame for the pernicious state of affairs: “The first was direct indoctrination through socialist propaganda, as well as habituation in the ways typical for socialist economic and political practice (this is responsible e.g. for primary egalitarianism, demands of welfare and social security from the state, claims to ‘leading political role’ by the working class etc.).  The second involved successful attempts at totalitarian control, by means of coercive state apparatus (resulting e.g. in opportunism, blind compliance, reluctance to take decisions, avoidance of personal responsibility etc., which together make up the syndrome of ‘prolonged infantilism’ matching the ‘paternalism’ of the state).  The third, and perhaps most crucial, were adaptive, defensive patterns developing spontaneously against indoctrination and totalitarian control.  They took the form of unintended consequences, or ‘boomerang effects’ (e.g. lack of respect for law, institutionalized evasion of rules, double standards of talk and conduct, glorification of tradition, idealization of the West)” (p89).

Loathe to say it though I do, his description of the paralysing impact of decades of authoritarian rule on individual minds contains elements, which ring disconcertingly true when viewing contemporary Britain from the outside.  I admit, polemicising aside, that there are limits to the comparison, but since nominations have been thin on the ground, indulge me a little longer with one further quotation from Professor Sztompka, this time cataloguing the factors inhibiting the acquisition of civilisational competence once the Communist regime has finally been overthrown, the anxieties of transition: “First is the widespread anomie or axiological chaos, common disorientation as to the binding norms and values, valid rules, right ways of life.  Old patterns have fallen down, new ones have not yet been legitimised.  thrown into uncertainty and devoid of moral guidance, people feel isolated, lonely, and turn their resentments against others.  Interpersonal suspicion, hostility, hatred – destroy whatever social bonds have been left intact by totalitarian rule (…) Second, the emergence of new life-chances, opportunities to raise social status, by freshly opened access to wealth, power, prestige – generates brutal competition, in which stakes are high but rules of the game – undeveloped.  Civility, fair play, cooperative attitudes – do not find conducive ground to put roots (…) Third, the rigid social controls, both external and internal are suddenly released.  Police force and the judiciary get disorganised and lose any legitimacy they might still possess.  The law is undermined by the claims that its totalitarian origins make it illegitimate and not binding.  If law is considered unjust or anachronic – why should one comply?  This is not the helpful condition for establishing the rule of law, as the fundamental principle of democracy.  And fourth, there are unintended costs of opening toward the Western world.  The flow of consumer mass culture of lowest quality arrives first, before any truly valuable products, and brings pornography and drugs, brutality and mysticism, organised crime and deviant ways of life.  The enthusiastic adoption of most superficial symbols of capitalist affluence reminds one of ‘conspicuous consumption’, ‘nouveau riche’, and ‘Great Gatsby syndrome’” (pp89-90).

There are certain familiarities with the litany of discontents related to how unpleasant a place Britain has become to live in, how courtesy and service have vanished from everyday interactions, even the pretence of politeness ousted by grasping commercialism and cynicism, the vacuous cult of celebrity and route to short-term fame (notoriety) via the likes of (now thankfully defunct) Big Brother where contestants parade and perform themselves in all their glorious banality, the eschewal of effort and quietly plugging away as the pathway to the rewards of peer recognition and achievement.

All of these thoughts were inspired by Charles Crawford’s piece addressing the limits of the redistribution of wealth within our societies in Being, Not Producing.  Particularly the (to me at least) revelation that amongst the array of punitive instruments and penalties that has been put in place to compensate for the erosion of meaningful social networks (in this particular instance a supportive family or set of responsible friends actually worth the designation who might be willing to show some tough love and help keep the recipient’s self-destructive tendencies in check) police may issue a Drinking Banning Order covering the entire country.

Before returning definitively from Central Europe, Island1 of Polandian shows us an intrepid Polish TV reporter showing off his waders at a variety of waterlogged locations in Floods in the news.

Although children playing conkers in school playgrounds have allegedly been forced into wearing protective goggles, I am heartened to hear via Wartime Housewife in Beano! that killjoy regulators have not yet succeeded in eliminating the catapult as part of standard issue mischief-making equipment.

Matt Wardman of The Wardman Wire highlights a possible large-scale miscarriage of justice in relation to child pornography charges in Operation Ore: Profound Consequences if it Collapses: “If this appeal is successful, the ultimate consequences will be profound, because Operation Ore was the first large-scale British ‘paedo’ case.  The alleged success of Operation Ore, and the public fear of paedophiles created and fed in its wake, is the foundation upon which law enforcement around paedophile offences and a related public culture dominated by fear of child abuse has been built”.

This is not the only instance where the questionable decisions have been taken to prosecute without robust evidence.  In When it comes to sexualising children, the CPS is far worse than Primark The Heresiarch of Heresy Corner deplores the conviction of two boys of primary school age for rape: “Until relatively recently, a boy under the age of 14 was deemed incapable – that is, physically incapable – of committing the crime of rape.  That was in a sense ridiculous, but it may validly be asked if a boy as young as ten is mentally capable of rape, even if he does have the hydraulic capacity.  It is the most adult of crimes – more adult than murder, for while children have a fairly clear concept of death, sex is something of which they have little comprehension.  Even if they do know where babies come from.  And however much porn they’ve seen on the Internet.

At most, these boys were acting out things that they had heard discussed – possibly watched online – and wondered about, for there is nothing more natural for children than curiosity about their bodies.  Though the boys in this case were the youngest children ever to accused of rape in England, childhood ‘sexual’ play is far from uncommon – as indeed it always has been, even in the days before children were bombarded daily with sexual imagery and talk.  There has, however, been an increasing (and frankly bizarre) tendency in recent years to view such activities through the prism of adult concerns about paedophilia and abuse, and to impose adult understandings of sex on children who are pre-sexual.  When the law steps in, with its adult-oriented definition of what is and is not a sex crime, the stage may be set for a tragedy of inappropriate labelling – the results of which will live with the children involved long after their childish misdemeanours should have been forgotten”.

He concludes: “When it comes to sexualising children, it turns out, the CPS is far worse than Primark.  It is strange for child welfare campaigners to trouble themselves over padded bras when the full majesty of the state is putting small boys on trial for the adult crime of rape.  It’s almost as though these children are being persecuted for the wider sexualisation of society and of childhood, which may have contributed to their behaviour, but which is in no sense their fault”.

Next Left blog covers the latest expenses furore in David Laws’ dilemma and the transition to gay equality, broadening the focus to encompass the wider issues at stake: “Some have expressed disappointment that, in the Britain of 2010, the most powerful gay man in the Cabinet did not feel he could be open about his sexuality.  That is an understandable instinct, but it is surely legitimate to think that these are highly personal decisions.  Most of us would be reluctant to think we could pronounce, without having lived in their shoes, on somebody else’s choices about their own life”.

Matt Wardman approaches the same subject from the angle of the coalition’s anxiety to distance themselves from the grubby and grasping exploitation of the system in the past in David Laws: His position is probably untenable.

In a highly productive week, Matt has also reproduced the full compendium of the Top 100 UK Political Blogs for May – by Wikio as well as launching The Orange Digital Campaign Awards (NOT): a gentle protest meme, further consolidating his site as one of the indispensable (not to mention authoritative) stopping off points for anyone interested in politics and the Internet regardless of party affiliation.

Subrosa asks the pertinent question Has the BBC’s Question Time Had Its Day?

In a highly entertaining blend of autobiographical anecdote and analysis, Ian Yorston of The Unreasonable Man highlights a tendency towards irrationality in political decisions (such as the closure of European air space) in Ashclouds, Airplanes, Engines and Risk.  One of the many pertinent questions he asks in relation to the hypothetical scenario in which an aircraft on a scheduled flight between England and the Continent were to encounter some particles spewed out from Eyjafjallajökull is as follows: “if the worst did come to the worst, and all the engines stopped working, then how difficult is it to land a modern commercial aircraft – deadstick – no thrust – given that the starting point is 20,000 feet above mainland Europe? – bear in mind that every Shuttle landing is a deadstick landing – and the Shuttle flies like a brick.  Bear in mind that we can land aircraft in the Hudson River.  Bear in mind that technology is getting better.  Bear in mind that there are airfields all over the place”.

Whereas any decision-maker will pay lengthy lip service to safety, I suspect that the real underlying concern is with litigation and avoiding compensation claims rather than any genuine human empathy.

Tim Newman’s White Sun of the Desert offers a fascinating insider’s view of the oil industry, embodying all the qualities that ensure the best of blogging beats journalism hands down (a distillation of specialist knowledge presented in accessible form, accuracy, passionate interest in the subject, the space to develop an argument as much as it requires without an editor breathing down your neck, freedom from the tyranny of writing for the sake of filling in column inches rather than when you genuinely have something to say and so on).  Let’s face it, the microcosm that is the high-pressure corporate world is about as alien and far removed from my daily reality as I can possibly imagine, in the popular imagination at least is awash with cigar-chomping, ruthless men in Stetsons, too macho even for the likes of Rosie the Riveter.  In Fateful Decisions on the Deepwater Horizon, he discusses possible contributory factors to the disaster not immediately apparent to the layperson: “The problem is, I think, a matter of egos.  Like I said, some oil companies deliberately recruit little Napoleons with egos bigger than your average offshore platform.  The interviews and selection process favour the born leaders and weed out the compliant team players, with the result that you have a generation of natural leaders – who have been told since joining that they are the very best, the cream of the crop – and nobody who just wants to settle down to the drudgery of getting the job done.  Which is why half the damned industry is made up of contractors, nobody else wants to do any actual work.  I exaggerate, but not a lot.  Anyway, if you have a bright, young, energetic high-flyer who you want to develop and gain experience in another area, then you put him in charge but you assign him a lieutenant.  And that lieutenant should be a grizzled old dog who has been round the block a dozen times and then some, knows everything and everybody, is as cynical as hell, but just doesn’t have the drive or energy or career desires to lead any more.  The old dog would ensure the young pup stays on the straight and narrow and doesn’t do anything stupid and remains on call should he need to offer advice drawn from his considerable experience.  The oil industry is chock-full of these blokes, and they’re being laid off by the thousand when they should be doing everything they can to keep them.  Instead, the egos of the high-flyers and the management, who are effectively promoting somebody just like themselves, won’t allow him to be told he’s wrong, about to make a stupid mistake, knows sod all, and really needs to start listening and wise up a bit.  All young engineers, myself included (on more than one occasion), have had a slap down like this from some old hand when we’ve stuck our neck out and thought we knew it all.  You feel pretty hurt afterwards, but it’s a vital process in learning what your limitations are and how to respect and listen to those around you.  When it happens, boy do you learn.  Sadly, I sometimes get the impression that some oil company staff are taught by default they know more than the contractors and everybody else and they should not be cowed into listening to them, hence you find experienced hands being second-guessed and shouted down by some arrogant git who has no idea what he’s talking about, and you find it far more often than is healthy for the industry”.

Another author with a privileged insight into a profession that comes under intense public scrutiny, Inspector Gadget of Police Inspector Blog, draws our attention to certain inconsistencies in expressing national pride in Through the Looking Glass.  In my days as a postgraduate student, I spent the best part of three years in Denmark, carrying out research into a subject, referred to rather dismissively by Lord Palmerston thus: “The Schleswig-Holstein question is so complicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it.  One was Prince Albert, who is dead.  The second was a German professor who became mad.  I am the third and I have forgotten all about it”.  One of the things that struck me during my time in Copenhagen was how the flag, Dannebrog (which according to the myth of its origin was a gift from heaven that turned the tide of battle in 1219, a peerless pedigree if ever there was one) was seamlessly woven into the fabric of everyday life, unashamedly on display everywhere, fluttering in the sea breeze on flagpoles in allotment gardens, waved to welcome family members being greeted at the airport.  It is not banned by over-zealous officials petrified of giving offence, folded away in a drawer to be consumed by moths, an object irredeemably tainted by unsavoury associations.

Yesterday, Viktor Orbán in his speech prior to being sworn in as Prime Minister of Hungary deployed a striking phrase when characterising the defeatist attitude propagated by the Socialist governments over the last eight years.  He talked about how Hungarians have been wandering around, heads bowed and that their horizons have never extended beyond their shoelaces.  In the UK, patriotic sentiment has been thoroughly pathologised by the Left, conflated with racism and intolerance.  However, the reason why one local council has banned flag flying whereas another has encouraged it is intimately linked with the specific context.  In the former, the flag is being linked to the World Cup, football, a sport much loved by the working class and carries connotations of hooliganism, brawling and mindless, drunken violence on the part of supporters.  Presumably, local worthies are terrified that the mere glimpse of an England flag on a passing vehicle might be enough to incite passers-by to engage in loutish behaviour, according to the red rag principle, triggering barely suppressed tendencies to lash out at the nearest target amongst the lower orders.  By contrast, sailing is a genteel, middle-class pursuit.  In addition, the Dunkirk evacuation (in which my grandfather took part) is a revered and iconic episode in our history, incorporated into our national identity along with the Battle of Britain and the White Cliffs of Dover.  The emphasis in the re-enactment was presumably on sacrifice the British genius of muddling through and coming up with pragmatic solutions when confronted with the most dire of circumstances, not letting our boys down in their hour of need.  In short, what separates the two is not only distance in time (past and all too threatening present), but respectability.

Sticking to the theme of the irritations of modern existence, Wrinkled Weasel of the eponymous blog loses patience with an ailing institution in Paper Free but not junk free: “Since when was the Post Office letters division a Public Service?  When was the last time anybody received a meaningful communication via the Royal Mail, that could have been done electronically?  The last important document to arrive at Weasel Hall was a Passport.  And that was by Private Courier.  The only thing we get from the postman these days is junk.  Day after day after day.  These days, posties are in reality, highly paid leaflet distributors, and, forgive me if I am mistaken here, but this aspect of the Post Office is done entirely for commercial reasons and is highly profitable.  It benefits nobody but the Post Office and perhaps also the companies who use this method of marketing, which apparently raises £67 billion in sales.  hardly what you could call a ‘public service’, though, is it?  Getting details of Twofers at Somerfield?  Do me a favour”.

Quite.  I completely agree with the Wrinkled Weasel’s point that the advent of e-mail has been the death knell for traditional postal services.  Over here, on the other side of the Channel, “pas de publicité” stickers were distributed for mailboxes (with the typical Waffelian twist that you can refine these instructions somewhat by demanding that unsolicited advertisements only be delivered in Flemish and not French).  Whenever the red van pulls up in front of the house, I can be fairly sure it is either for a bill or the tax declaration form, nothing to look forward to in other words.  More recently, De Post conducted a sneakier campaign to prise information out of residents as a means of getting round our grass roots resistance to any extraneous printed matter.  Feigning concern for the environment (the waste of thousands of tonnes of paper consigned to the recycling bins without having been so much as glanced at never having caused them sleepless nights), De Post sent a questionnaire form to every household in the region unapologetically poking its nose into every conceivable aspect of existence from income to hygiene product preferences, “All the better to target you with, my dear”.  Having taken the trouble to ascertain that amongst the hundreds of boxes to tick, there was no option for “I do not wish to receive any advertising” (although, to be honest, by the time I reached the end, I would seriously have welcomed the option of “Fuck off”).  Something about their assurances that the data was anonymous did not quite ring true (maybe it was the fact that my name and address was printed brazenly at the top).  Let’s face it, how could they tailor the advertising to suit your personal preferences if they did not store the information?  Seriously, who in their right mind would voluntarily surrender that amount of intimate detail about themselves just to eliminate a minor inconvenience?  I don’t care about data protection disclaimers, I bet that the sole purpose of the exercise was to gather saleable intelligence from the widest possible sample (apart from central government only De Post keep records of every single householder in the country).  End result: apart from the local double glazing and garage door specialists, the only rubbish I am pestered with comes from the eternally optimistic Aldi, God bless them.

Not that all is hunky-dory in the virtual world, as Mark Pack demonstrates in Dear Facebook, I don’t like you this morning.

Jess McCabe of The F-Word announces a Summer school for feminist activists to be held in London between 31st July and 1st August.

To conclude, I warmly commend three posts by way of a balm for the soul, two revealing hidden gems of the countryside and one in a more urban setting.  Firstly, a very warm welcome back to Jonathan Calder of Liberal England with a delightful introduction to The old church at Tur Langton.  Followed by Philip Wilkinson of English Buildings on Horningsham, Wiltshire, which surely comes close to the English pastoral ideal, though its thatched Congregational Chapel was built for Scottish workers.  Last, but by no means least, Diamond Geezer gives us the benefit of his unparalleled local knowledge the latest instalment of his guide to the Lost rivers of London in Hackney Brook.

Next week’s Roundup will be hosted by Jackart at A Very British Dude.

As always, nominations should be sent to the mailbox at britblog [at] gmail [dot] com  For a full statement of editorial policy, hosting rota and a complete archive of the Roundup since its inception, consult the Britblog Roundup Central website.

Welcome to the 263rd short but sweet edition of the Britblog Roundup, which presents a varied assortment of submissions for your delectation in an exercise comparable to tipping the envelopes (whether brightly coloured or just plain brown) and packages from a postbag onto the table without their having passed through the sorting office first.  The weekly host’s task being that of organising the material into a few loose categories rather than censoring (or censuring) the contents.

Politics

Andrew Ian Dodge writing at Pajamas Media gives us his Reaction to the Inaugural British Tea Party Event in Brighton on 28th February.

Andrew Cooper of Greening Kirklees extols the virtues of installing solar panels in I join the ‘Energy generating Democracy’!: “It is quite a liberating feeling.  I know one of my potential energy suppliers is 93 million miles away but I feel a much greater affinity with it than the earthbound energy companies.  I guess it is because the sun never sends me any bills and 0p/kWh is by far my favourite tariff!”

Not that there are enough tranquil leafy suburbs to go round…Sarah Cope of the eponymous blog ponders how best to coerce private landlords into cleaning up their act and stop scrimping on repairs and basic maintenance in Private Sector Housing – time to get tough: “Sewage splattered across the path to the front door due to a broken pipe.  Houses split into 10 to 12 rooms, looking decidedly dilapidated.  Huge bundles of wires strung along outside walls, clearly a health and safety nightmare.

These are just some of the badly managed properties that I have come across in the private sector whilst door-knocking in Stroud Green.  One resident told me it was ‘like living in a slum’ and that it had been that way for years”.

Retreating for a moment from the sleeves-rolled-up more practical side of righting wrongs to a more theoretical level, David Morgan of Washminster summarises Lord Chancellor Jack Straw’s lecture on Parliamentary Reform, whilst Riversider of River’s Edge contemplates A hung parliament – Implications for the Left: “A hung parliament, or a government with a weak majority would reflect the weakness and indecision of the ruling class and their political representatives in the 3 main parties.  They have been badly shaken and disorientated by the disastrous credit crunch, which burst their bubble of ebullient confidence.  Now they foresee a much more complex, difficult and dark future for their system”.

At the RMT London Calling blog, Janine is not quite so optimistic about the prospect of future improvements and is prompted to pose the question Does the Economic crisis Mean that Employers ‘Have To’ Cut Jobs? contrasting responses to recession by London Transport in more confident times with those of the present day.

Slightly further afield, Fraught Mummy of the Brits in Bosnia Blog deplores the recent arrest of Ejup Ganic in British politics, a dirty, dirty game, arriving at a damning verdict: “The British Government has said that it was ‘just a case of the judicial authorities following their legal obligations’ and they were not making a political statement at all.  Try telling that to the thousands of protestors outside of the British Embassy in Sarajevo on Friday.  They, like pretty much everyone else, see it as a way of appeasing Serbia for the trial of Karadzic”.

Neil Craig of A Place to Stand provides an alternative analysis in two pieces devoted to the subject, Ejup Ganic – War Crimes Extradition and Ejup Ganic – ‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall’.

Ben Challis, part of the team of At last…the 1709 Copyright Blog draws our attention to some suspiciously fortuitous timing in relation to the publication of certain research results and the sublimely catty reaction to it by one ISP in OOOO errrr missus, the claws are out in DEB debate.

Dwelling for a moment on the theme of Internet freedom and intellectual property rights, Andrew Robinson of Pirate Party Blog publicises the outcome of a vote in the European Parliament in ACTA Supporters – UKIP named and shamed.

Inspired by news of a controversy over the underlying message conveyed by differential pricing of Ballerina Barbie and Theresa dolls as examined by Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy, Charles Crawford addresses some of the wider dilemmas in Racism In The Toyshop Sale: “is there any sensible way other than the price mechanism to measure the weight of rival views’ view on the subject?  If ten people complain but 900 do not, is there any issue?  Is a good enough answer to those offended along the lines of ’shop somewhere else’?”

Guy News covers the release of pub landlord Nick Hogan, the smoking ban martyr.

Feminism

Gavin Robinson of Investigations of a Dog reminds us that Women Really Do Exist, a statement not as straightforwardly obvious as you might be tempted to think given the marginalisation (to the point of almost complete invisibility) of women in traditional historiography.  As part of a contribution to Women’s History Month, he links to They Really Do Exist, an initiative of Liberal Democrat blogger Jennie Rigg aimed at disproving sweeping assertions that downplay the role played by women in any given area of cultural endeavour.  Gavin states: “What I find most striking about this situation is that many male political bloggers (even liberal ones) try to delegitimize feminism by claiming that it isn’t really politics.  In contrast, anti-feminist academics are more likely to delegitimize feminist history by asserting that it is political and therefore doesn’t meet their standards of (false) neutrality.  This double standard gives patriarchy the best of both worlds and makes things even more difficult for feminists”.

In a thoughtful essay that combines practical valuable tips on publishing on demand with a keen sense of how such forms of expression perpetuate the venerable tradition of the women’s movement and political activism within it, Adventures in self-publishing, Deborah Withers encourages the pooling of skills and resources in order to articulate viewpoints that would otherwise be ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream media.

Culture

Philip Booth of Ruscombe Green assesses a recent performance of The Amazing and Preposterous Constance Smedley at Everyman Theatre (with a couple of other recommendations thrown in for good measure).

In a review of Robert Harris’s Lustrum, Natalie Bennett of Philobiblon considers the similarities and differences between modern British politics and those of a turbulent antiquity in The pains of politics, Roman-style.

Miscellaneous

In 40,000 new sex workers for the South Africa world cup?  Really?  Anatomy of a number, mngreenall issues a salutary reminder of why we should never relax our vigilance whilst perusing newspaper reports.  Search engines are a treasure trove when it comes to fact checking and tracing the origins of unsubstantiated rumours.  Indeed, when journalists wax snooty about the alleged unreliability and sloppiness of bloggers it is good to have a few ripostes in one’s repertoire…

Jim Jay of The Daily (Maybe) vents his spleen about one of his less conventional pet hates in Disorganised Rage!  And, yes, I most definitely feel his pain.

Tom Reynolds of Random Acts of Reality recounts why he has decided to banish Unwarranted Uncharitable Thoughts when called out early in the morning.

With customary charm, the ever-entertaining Diamond Geezer invites us to hop on board the Number 45 to accompany him on an exotic journey: “There are many glamorous destinations to which a man can travel from St Pancras International.  Paris, Brussels, even Margate, to name but a few.  But instead I took the bus to Elephant & castle, Camberwell, Brixton and beyond.  Given that I was staying on board until the very last stop, it was the ‘and beyond’ bit which unnerved me”.

To close in humorous vein, Ross of Unenlightened Commentary is captivated by a tale of Teenage Lesbians Stripped…, all strictly in the pursuit of research into outrageous manifestations of blatant discrimination, you understand.

Next week’s Roundup will be hosted by cabalamat at Amused Cynicism.  As ever, nominations should be sent to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com  For a full statement of editorial policy, hosting rota and a complete archive of the Roundup since its inception, consult the Britblog Roundup Central website.

When an architect is so swept away by the splendour of his own vision and the grandeur of his plans, so utterly convinced of his own genius the needs of the users might seem to him nothing more than the petty gripes of lesser mortals whose imaginations are enslaved by their addiction to trivial comforts.  The quality of the materials assumes a fetishistic significance, any quibbling with the unblemished integrity of the original concept on the basis of mundane concerns blasphemy, any alteration to the plans, however minor, a wanton act of desecration.  How his Muse would stamp her feet in rage undignified.  Not that this particular architect paid the slightest heed to the objections of the delegation during the inspection tours.  So the corridors are at their narrowest (just wide enough to allow one person of slender build to pass another provided that both are completely unencumbered by documents and files) where the through traffic is greatest, causing maximum inconvenience precisely at the moment when punctuality and smoothness of passage are everything.  Admittedly, the central atrium with vines climbing steel cables from floor to ceiling possesses a certain charm, though not nearly enough to alleviate the stress of trying to navigate through the crowds of lobbyists and journalists to the meeting rooms.

Our chief objection was to the black walls lining the booths, imparting a coffin-like atmosphere to our workplace.  Seven hour shifts deprived of the slightest chink of natural light enough to reduce even the most resiliently cheerful of disposition to a state of despondency.  Our mental health and emotional well-being summarily dismissed, a further reminder of our lowly status could be issued with impunity.  In the interests of cost-cutting (perhaps this ascribes more calculated malevolence than is warranted, as it is equally plausible that so little thought was devoted to the issue that no deliberate disdain was involved though this is hardly a source of consolation), interpreters are expected to answer the call of nature in a mixed-sex environment.  Quite startling for the first several months so deeply ingrained in our cultural psyche is the segregation pertaining to intimate and embarrassing bodily functions.  I open the door and can instantly determine that a male colleague had availed himself of the facilities before me (one of the anecdotes recounted with particular relish concerns the occasion when the institution played host to a congress of sex workers – which greatly expanded the vocabulary of the professional linguists in a particularly memorable field of terminology that day – who undaunted by the lack of ladies’ toilets invaded the gents where, much to the astonishment and admiration of the teller, they peed standing up with a no-nonsense perfect aim, at any rate better than he was able to muster with his inhibited and flustered dribble).

The speaker was droning on in colourless, unmodulated international English about some obscure codicil in the domain of intellectual property rights.  Needless to say our attention wandered despite the architect’s best efforts to banish distractions beyond the usual speculating on whether the delegate’s hair was natural or a clever weave.  Words have different flavours for us, we savour them in a kind of occupationally-induced synesthesia.  Their sound evokes vivid responses of pleasure or disgust and we recall those that have fallen into disuse in our everyday exchanges with the fondness that others reserve for the memory of lost loves.  “Wassock” was the first to provoke debate (with a fierce argument over the appropriate spelling).  Followed by “coffin-dodger” and whether Grufti could be considered the correct equivalent in German (kriptaszökevény, literally “fugitive from the crypt” in Hungarian in my opinion a far closer match).

This was followed by a nostalgia-tinged discussion on technological obsolescence.  Our third colleague with an academic background in anthropology who had been taught at university by Mary Douglas (thereby incurring my undying envy) had lived in France for so long that not only were the terms we had mentioned unknown to her, but she could remember the not too distant days when IBM had been an excellent employer of freelancers.  The language combination before English displaced all other modes of communication had been French, Italian and German alongside the tongue that was destined to elbow out all others with supreme ruthlessness.  She then proceeded to laud the virtues of one of that company’s products of yesteryear, which she referred to as “the golf ball”.  Neither of us belonged to a generation for whom this sparked any associations.  I barely remembered the floppy disc, having been in an extended state of student poverty precluding the purchase of such luxuries as a PC.

Her reminiscences transported me back to September 1996 when, at a conference in Budapest, I sat listening intently to every syllable of the opening address by the President of the Republic Árpád Göncz.  With no trace of bitterness about his past, he joked about how the population of the prison he had languished in comprised the most eminent gathering of translators and intellectuals in a single location in the country’s history.  His speech was delivered in the style still prevalent in Central Europe, sentence by sentence with the interpreter working in staccato bursts rather than in more coherent and flowing five-minute (or longer) segments as is customary in the Western context.  This gives rise to particular challenges, particularly when the speaker has a sly sense of humour and gives the poor interpreter little to go on (all the more cringe-inducing for victim and audience alike, as every interpreter feels more vulnerable when exposed in full view rather than huddling in the booth behind protective panes of glass that separate them from the listeners).  When Göncz proclaimed: “For the translator the letter X is the most important” his interpreter checked that he had heard correctly, understanding the words without grasping the meaning.  With a twinkle of mischief in his eye, the President then deployed the rhetorical device of emphasis through repetition to increase the clamminess of his interpreter’s palms.  The latter could bear the tension no longer and begged for clarification.  Göncz then took pity and explained: “In the days when we worked on typewriters, using the X-key was the only way we could erase any errors by blotting them out”.  No correction ribbon was provided, and the white fluid we take for granted had not yet been invented.

Sam Lowry retreats from the unbearable present into the solace of delusion, but Göncz enjoyed no such escape in the world outside fiction.  Yet what better means to preserve one’s sanity in confinement than to translate, releasing the imagination to soar beyond the walls and bars.  As Göncz described it: “(…) the translator has to become part of – not the sentence or the text – but of the situation, which is described by it.  he has to enter the setting.  Like an actor entering the spirit of his role.  Only then will he know with certainty what the book or the subject of a particular sentence may have and should have said at that point and how he did say or do whatever he said or did.  because at that point, in that situation and at that particular place or moment these were the only words he could have said.  Whether he is emperor, shaman or American teenager.  So the translator sitting by his typewriter, has no choice but turn himself into emperor, shaman or American teenager.  He develops a sensitivity, for which otherwise, in his daily life, he has no use at all” [ quoted in Klaudy Kinga and János Kohn (eds.), Transferre Necesse Est, Budapest, Scholastica, 1997, p17]

Welcome to the pre-hibernation edition of the Britblog Roundup where blogging activity appears to have succumbed to seasonal sluggishness in the absence of major scandals.

 Politics

Writing at Pajamas Media, Andrew Ian Dodge weighs up the Tory leader’s prospects of success at next year’s election in David Cameron Likely Britain’s Next PM, But He May Yet Blow the Chance: “Labour might change leaders between now and the election.  They know that Gordon brown, barring a miracle, would go down to a crushing defeat and cost many a Labour MP his seat.  Their clamouring for change was mostly pacified at their party conference, but as their doom looms larger and larger, it seems hard to believe they will not attempt to rid themselves of the loathed Brown.

There is no guarantee that any other leader would win the general election and keep Labour in power – in fact, it is almost certain that they would not.  however, a new leader might be able to significantly reduce the majority held by David Cameron.  It is even possible that there might be a ‘hung’ parliament, where no party has overall control.  This would bring up the possibility of a ‘minority’ government, which are notoriously weak.  Worse, it could lead to a ‘coalition’ government made up of everyone who wants to keep the Conservatives out of government”.

Meanwhile, James Higham of Nourishing Obscurity has high hopes of a radically different coalition: Brit politics suddenly interesting – time for a coalition to win in 2010, an idea on which he elaborates further in Steps to getting this coalition afloat.

In a slightly late entry (given the date of publication, it would have been more appropriate for last week’s edition, but I am in an indulgent mood and it is a first-time nomination, after all), Joanna Cake of Having My Cake and Eating It Too assesses Nick Griffin’s performance in Question Time: the BNP on Homosexuality and Immigration: “What the BNP is doing is their own form of exploitation.  Appearing to stand up for the common man whilst, all the time, merely adopting a stance that will win them enough popularity to start feathering their own nest.

Our only consolation is that watching Mr Griffin weaseling and smiling as he spouted statements and denials that made so many people just stare open-mouthed with disbelief, his transparency became obvious to all”.

Mick Fealty of Slugger O’Toole encourages us to listen to Clive James on the subject of the postal strike in An ‘old-style left’ view on the dignity of labour…

I agree with him that it is well worth the effort, especially when you are treated to soundbites such as this: “Where there is dignity in labour, workers usually want to work, even if the task is a drudge.  They should beware of any outrage on their behalf by false friends on the playtime left who have never done a hand’s turn.  While it is a fine thing to be an artist, it is an even finer thing to be a doctor or a nurse.  And it can be just as fine a thing to stack shelves or clean lavatories”.

Having dealt with a client convinced that electrical appliances are insidiously whispering at him to commit murder, Clairwil ponders the corrosive and compassion-dulling impact of constant exposure to benefit scroungers rhetoric in The Value of Nothing!

“I do realise that whilst this chap is out of work he’s costing us all money, but I personally find the idea of a seriously ill person being harassed into employment for the sake of saving a few bob morally repugnant.  Money is important and it’s very useful at the shops, but a person’s worth cannot be  determined solely by their economic worth.  Good Heavens if people believed that they’d cheer when they hear about the deaths of those deemed economically worthless and no one has been that evil since we saw off Hitler”.

Except for the Daily Mail readers who left – moderated – comments of approval on a piece reporting that an illegal immigrant had suffocated whilst hiding on board a lorry that is…

In Secret ACTA treaty would impose 3-strikes, cabalamat of Amused Cynicism highlights the latest moves to clamp down on Internet freedom.

In a customarily incisive piece at Liberal Conspiracy, Unity examines the issue of Offensive Language?

On the subject of banning the use of “retard” as a term of abuse, Unity remarks: “You can’t make words disappear, but you can educate people to use words in their proper context and to understand why context matters.  That’s how you change attitudes and it’s attitudes that matter, not words.

That’s where the dogma of ‘political correctness’ too often gets it completely wrong.  It tries to change attitudes by making rules, giving people banal lists of words that they supposedly can’t use in any circumstances because the words themselves are ‘offensive’”.

And: “Making simplistic rules about what can and can’t be said doesn’t change attitudes.

frequently, all it does is provide cover for people whose attitudes aren’t going to change no matter how much you try to educate them.  Sure, you can use these rules to force Nick Griffin into saying ‘Muslim’ rather than ‘Paki’, but you know damn well that ‘Paki’ is what he’s actually thinking when he starts railing inanely against ‘Muslims’ for the umpteenth time.  It just doesn’t change attitudes at all, but it does explain why people are so vocal in their complaints about political correctness – because sticking to those ‘rules’ doesn’t always work as well as the unreconstructed bigot might hope.  No matter how careful they are in sticking to the rules, the vast majority of bigots are still easily identifiable because they still get the context of their comments hopelessly wrong”.

Feminism

Penelope Trunk recently updated her Twitter feed with a short message: “I’m in a board meeting.  Having a miscarriage.  Thank goodness, because there’s a fucked-up three-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin”.

Cue outcry on the appropriateness of her admission of relief.  Far from being a callous self-promotionalist, Ms Trunk has personal experience of the distress a miscarriage can bring in its wake:

“I also understand the pain a miscarriage can cause.  I had one in between having my two kids, and I thought I was never going to recover.  I remember the ultrasound technician’s face when she saw the baby was dead.  I knew before she told me: I screamed and had to be put in a separate room at the doctor’s office because I had a panic attack and nearly fainted.  I was inconsolable for days.  I was scared I’d never have another child.  I hated myself for not trying to have children sooner.

But this time was different.  I knew I did not want the baby.  Is that so bad?  I had taken a pregnancy test when I couldn’t do my normal run or stay awake at work.  When it came back positive, I felt old, scared and angry.  When I called my boyfriend to tell him, he cried.  He doesn’t believe in abortion.  But I have a child with autism and the odds that the next child will have autism is almost 90%.  The odds of a mother over 40 having a child with Down’s syndrome is one in 100.  The risk that a woman who is 42 will miscarry at some point in the pregnancy is higher than 50%.  These are not good odds.  And I’m the sole breadwinner.  I already knew that the risks of this pregnancy were huge.  And if I had a baby with compromised medical health, it would jeopardise my ability to care for my two kids in the way I want to”.

She opposes the suppression of women’s voices through the weight of collective disapproval, as this merely serves to perpetuate isolation and suffering:

“I believe that the history of women can be seen, in some ways, as a history of language.  The more women talk about their experiences, the more power they have to shape those experiences.  Words such as date rape and antenatal depression are empowering because they give us ways to talk about issues that were hidden when we did not have the language to express them.  We have a word for miscarriage.  We should use it to explore the complicated issues around it.

If you insist on keeping the word private, you force the experience of women back into darkness.  If you start telling women which media is appropriate for which emotion, you undermine the progress we make”.

Laurie Penny of Penny Red reacts in Have you no shame? (her title echoing the question asked by the CNN news presenter):

“Personal, factual, shoving the meaty details of women’s everyday life up in your face.  Plus, it quite delightfully manages to combine in 32 words most of the big taboos of modern misogynist thought: women bleeding in the boardroom.  Women being candid about parts of our physical lives which aren’t to do with fucking but also matter to us.  Women’s bodies being, in fact, more than just tools for baby-making and delivering sexual pleasure to men”.

I am delighted to announce that next week’s Roundup will return to the more than capable hands of Clairwil, former member of the regular hosting team.  As always, nominations should be submitted to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com  For a full statement of editorial policy, a list of the upcoming hosts and a complete archive of the Roundup since its inception, consult the Britblog Roundup Central website.

In many respects, ex-patriate exile resembles a form of self-delusion.  For many years, I would not entertain the thought of buying rather than renting, as to commit myself to a mortgage would be tantamount to acknowledging that my stay was anything other than temporary.  Some places lend themselves to cocooning yourself in denial more easily than others, Waffle Central surely near the top of the list for the Brit, with London close enough to make even a day-trip feasible, BBC One and Two on tap via cable providers (and well within the satellite footprint for Freeview), newspapers and magazines freely available and the presence of a large community enabling anyone so inclined to pursue a hermetically-sealed virtually monoglot existence disrupted only by a minimum of dealings with local and fiscal authorities.

Ultimately, when the pressures of work subside for a few hours the pang of separation, of physical distance coupled with the knowledge of having missed out, no matter how frequent the phone calls or electronic missives, prompts doubts or even existential questions about whether the extra income is really worth the sacrifice of months and years that can never be recovered.  The fortnight in the cottage, as the only occasion on which I return, becomes invested with great emotional significance, as my opportunity to catch up, to atone for my unavailability.

Mattie took possession of the keys to his ground floor council flat, an empty shell, or blank canvas as he prefers to think of it.  The previous tenants had left behind some unwanted gifts, having dumped their household refuse in the shed rather than availing themselves of the local disposal services.  In spite of the lack of carpets, the entire property had become flea-infested, so Mattie had to fumigate it before he could even contemplate moving in.  The garden is an embarrassment, used by neighbours near and far as a tipping ground (Mattie’s greatest fear discarded hypodermic needles tossed casually over the low fence).  Its forlorn appearance at least made him feel good about himself, however, reminding him that he has standards and would never have allowed such neglect to set in.  Some satisfaction could at least be gained from restoring it to a more respectable state with flower beds and perhaps a modest patch of lawn.  Between viewing and picking up the key, a can of petrol had been discarded.  I enquired whether he could lodge an official protest, but he explained that prospective tenants are given the keys for an inspection and are then required to sign a form declaring that they are satisfied that the flat or house is in an acceptable condition, in effect a liability waiver.  When the river is in spate there is a more than negligible risk that Mattie’s best efforts will be submerged anyway, so I teased him about how the peaty waters would save him the trouble of a major clear-out.

The conversation turned to Stuart and the relish with which he had stripped off to go wading out into the chilly waters, giving us comfort-junkie adults the shivers just watching him.  As Lorna pointed out, his lack of inhibition comes from his innocence, he is still happy to wander about “in the scud” with an unselfconsciousness the rest of us could only envy (as he himself had put it to me with guileless sincerity: “I like being naked in a big house”).  I asked about his two front milk teeth, which have decayed into tiny black stumps, a query motivated by concern rather than disapproval, as I could quite easily imagine how it would be next to impossible to force Stuart to acquire the habits of dental hygiene, wriggling and writhing in dissent before screaming and howling (he combines the notorious family thrawnness with a substantial bulk for his age, relegating the idea of restraining him long enough to insert a toothbrush and pea-sized portion of fluoride salvation to the realm of pure fantasy).  Rory patiently explained the dire situation patients are confronted with in 21st century Scotland.  He had heard rumours of a new NHS dentist opening up in York Place (a good 35 miles away) and made the trip down to join the queue.  Although he arrived fairly early, it already snaked round several streets, with over 4,000 hopefuls desperate to sign up.  He refuses to darken the doors of the local private clinic after three incidents.  Once when he was fined £20 for failing to turn up for an appointment on the day our Mother died; ditto when his wife was bleeding from her placenta whilst in the advanced stages of her pregnancy with Stuart and they were terrified that they might lose him and finally when he was sitting in the chair, two of his teeth having been filed down ready for the insertion of crowns, he was treated to the unedifying spectacle of the supervising dentist bawling out her younger colleague for incompetence, that she was to be summarily dispatched to re-sit the relevant tutorial she had botched the procedure so badly.  In the meantime, Rory was turfed out with a number mouth and no crowns.  Lorna, whose entire nursing career has been in the NHS, corroborated that there is no comeback with private dentists.  This news merely strengthened my resolve never to settle back in my homeland, no matter how great the wrench, how constant the ache of voluntary banishment.  I remembered my parents’ horror stories of how it was standard practice for the dentist to simply remove all the teeth of non-lucrative patients so that he would never have to bother with them again.  As a result, they both wore dentures from the age of 18 onwards.  It sickens me to think that the clock has been turned back to the bad old days when level of care is directly dependent on level of income, that the most vulnerable are being callously betrayed (so far the rot is most visible in the dental sector, but its inexorable spread is attested to by the absence of compassion implied by refusals to treat individuals who have brought their conditions upon themselves, through their “lifestyle choices”.  Why should anyone feel sorry for the fag-puffers and the fatties whose illnesses are all self-inflicted?  This is the ugly truth behind rationing, the implicit value judgement that deems the life of one human being to be of lesser value due to “bad habits”, another sign of the erosion of solidarity within our society and the triumph of middle-class moralising, the sneer of the self-righteous).

After a dinner of roast pork, mashed potato, broccoli and Yorkshire pudding followed by the chocolate sponge Lorna had bought for my birthday with Mackie’s traditional Scottish vanilla, which transported us back to the days of the ice-cream van that summoned the children outdoors for a 99 (a cone with a scoop or two and half a Cadbury’s Flake protruding) or a slider (with the ice-cream sandwiched between two wafers), we made our way down to the shore in the fading light to watch the bats skimming over the surface of the calm loch.  In the beam of the torch it became apparent why: hundreds of thousands of sedge flies hovered in a feeding bonanza for nocturnal predators.  G’s sleep had been interrupted by a Pipistrelle the previous night as it had attempted to fly through the skylight into his room, thwarted by the mosquito mesh and had started clambering over it, leaving little tokens of its distress and displeasure before locating an escape route to the grey slates.

When the midgie onslaught became intolerable, we retreated to indulge in a game of knockout whist, a tradition we have preserved since childhood.  Except that now we are the boozy grown-ups, our laughter enhanced by a large bottle of Leffe Blonde and Schiehallion Beer (a 4.6% Pilsener with a slightly smoky and not too bitter flavour that I developed a taste for over the fortnight, the initial purchase one of those fortuitous spur of the moment decisions attributable to a blend of curiosity and sentimentality – how could I resist a brew bearing the name of the mist-clad slopes of the mountain whose moods we observe each day?)  As the beer flowed, Mattie’s mischievous streak manifested itself.  He kept pestering the Hungarian: “Can I pull your beard?”  When the latter feigned anger after the umpteenth challenge, reaching over to my cousin, Mattie issued a mock warning: “I’ve got a lighter!”

Another custom that we have kept alive in slightly modified form is the “sweetie ration”.  Every morning, my Mother and Auntie Cathy would solemnly distribute a certain quantity amongst us, very solicitous about fairness, blind to age and gender, we received an identical number.  On rainy days when we were confined indoors, Rory, Lorna and I would gamble our precious treats with predictable results: Lorna, the card sharp, would always end up with a huge pile, I would keep some, but not all and Rory would fume with rage and anguish at being left empty-handed (although kind-hearted Lorna always took pity on him and returned them).  Nowadays our substitute is either buckets of Maltesers or, as was the case this year, a massive tin of Quality Street donated by Lorna that had been languishing in her flat since Christmas.  As we played, Mattie noticed that the Hungarian’s favourite was the chocolate-covered coconut (easily spotted with its rectangular shape and blue wrapper) and proceeded to sneakily spirit them into his pockets.  I aided and abetted him in this endeavour, sliding one across the table every time he won a hand (Mattie never ceases to amaze us with the sheer audaciousness of his luck, coming back from the dead time and again to beat us on a blind chance).  Eventually, the long drive back along the winding shore road could be delayed no longer (Rory very laudably never touches a drop when he is behind the wheel) and they laced up their boots in the conservatory before heading to the car.  When Rory had reversed and they were about to head off up the path, Mattie wound down his window for a final taunt: “I’ve got all the coconut ones!”

Stuart Testing the Waters

[15th August 2009]

We were all feeling despondent at the news of Wayne’s suicide.  Such a gentle man, the only hint of violence directed against himself at the end.  Gathered in the living room, Mattie attempted to relieve the tension by distracting us with anecdotes.  Amongst his numerous past jobs, he spent a long stint working at Victoria Wine at the bottom of the Old High Street (ignominiously ousted by a bakery chain, falling victim to changing fashions and competition from the sprawling perimeter hypermarkets, their accessibility unimpaired by double yellow lines), which had been a wine merchant’s premises for 250 years, its cellars like catacombs extending all the way to beneath the City Hall.  Blessed with a healthy natural curiosity, Mattie had taken full advantage of the opportunity to explore and had come across some ancient crumbling ledgers, which he correctly surmised nobody would miss and still owns today.

For the most part, the hours behind the counter were fairly monotonous, but he was once forced to call for emergency assistance.  Towards the close of an unremarkable day’s business, a stocky yet somewhat intimidating figure shuffled through the door, his expression both detached and oddly intense at the same time.  Ignoring the well-stocked shelves of reds and whites spanning the globe from the fragrant vineyards of Tuscany to the New World, his order was simple: Virginia Gold tobacco, filter papers and matches.

“That’ll be £5.95″.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying,” came the matter of fact reply with a slight undertone of menace.

Slightly taken aback by this bold assertion, Mattie scrutinised the customer more closely.  Slightly too conspicuous to blend in with a crowd, he seemed an unlikely candidate to be on Her Majesty’s payroll as a secret agent.  Unless he was making a deliberately cryptic reference to social security benefits, indeed a government payment by proxy, his statement was difficult to fathom.

“Do you have any cash, sir?” Mattie politely enquired, keeping hold of the requested items.  Silence ensued.  Several minutes crept by, McLaughlin’s face failing to betray any agitation or inner turmoil at Mattie’s intransigence.  He turned and walked out without a word.

Approximately five minutes later, the bell tinkled again, announcing the arrival of a client.  Mattie looked up from his paper with a sense of foreboding.  For once, he would have preferred a lonely pensioner about to blow his cheque on a carrier bag full of oblivion, or a suspiciously callow specimen whom he would be obliged to challenge for identification only to be regaled with an unsolicited introduction to the most recent innovations in pejoratives.  Sure enough, the shadow over the classifieds was cast by his impecunious friend, undaunted by the rebuttal.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying,” he repeated, when Mattie cited the same price as before.

“I’m sorry, mate, the government’s is not paying, now, please, do you have any money?”

Again, no response was forthcoming, not even the merest hint of displeasure or consternation.  Not wishing to risk any provocation, Mattie did not dare to avert his eyes as McLaughlin stood impassive before giving up and exiting the premises.

In the interval between visits, Mattie pondered his options, closing early an increasingly appealing scenario.  His thoughts were interrupted by the return of his persistent visitor.  This time, he did not bother retrieving the articles from the shelf.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying”.

“Let me explain how it works,” Mattie replied, unsure of whether the concept of a commercial transaction was something McLaughlin had ever been exposed to.  “You tell me what it is that you want, I find it, I tell you how much it costs, you give me the money and I hand over the goods.  I supply you with your cigarettes in exchange for notes and coins.  Do you understand?”

“Are you refusing to serve me?” McLaughlin asked, his voice trembling.

“No, but you have to be able to pay me before I can give you what you are asking for”.

Outwardly unperturbed until that moment, McLaughlin’s eyeballs rather alarmingly started rolling in opposite directions.  Afraid that his patron might lash out in frustration and reluctant to put his own reaction times to the test, Mattie ducked beneath the counter and slammed the panic button.  The police arrived with exemplary promptness, McLaughlin having vacated the off-license.  As Mattie accounted for his actions to the WPC, describing his terror of imminent violence in spite of the lack of evidence of vandalism, theft or the most minor of scuffles, he noticed a familiar shape approaching the door.

“That’s him!” Mattie yelled and the WPC set off in hot pursuit, as McLaughlin made himself scarce at the sight of the uniform.

“Mr McLaughlin!  Mr McLaughlin, can I have a word with you, please?”

Three patrol cars and a “meat wagon” pulled up on the pavement at the end of the pedestrian zone to block his escape, the burly duty sergeant lunging for him.  In the end, it took six officers to restrain the recalcitrant captive.  The local force had been on high alert, as McLaughlin had absconded from a secure ward at Murray Royal psychiatric hospital the previous day and they had been expecting trouble.

[13th August 2009]

At the cottage, the approach of the weekend is betrayed by two tell-tale signs: the level of the loch and the sprouting of tents on the opposite shore like noxious fungi.  The former attributable to anticipated peaks in electricity consumption, as the water drives the turbines in the power station and is artificially regulated, the latter leading to every available lay-by becoming clogged with campers in spite of the best efforts of local farmers to sabotage their sleepovers (one gouged huge holes out of the embankment with a digger to render the ground too uneven).  In spite of their occasionally ferocious exteriors (leather jackets, jagged, blood red Mohican haircuts, steel toe-capped bovver boots) defiantly displaying their rejection of the values of the mainstream, Rory, Mattie and Spike have always taken great pride in being responsible campers and concealing every trace of their presence upon departure.  Over the years they have cleared out practically every stick of dead wood on the Foss side to fuel their massive bonfires, sneering at the amateurism and dim-wittedness of townies let loose from their concrete confines.  Whose guttering flames were fed by green wood.  Where Rory and the lads had carefully removed the fallen branches grass and bluebells thrived, compensating in some measure for the indifference of the Forestry Commission in maintaining the native woodland.  Rory recounted one occasion when Spike began shaking a rotten-looking birch to test its suitability for combustion and the crown came plunging down, landing neatly between his feet.  A sobering reminder of our tenuous hold on life.

On another evening whilst searching for a suitable spot, an elderly farmer had warned them: “Ye cannie go campin’ here, boys”.  They protested that they would clear up after themselves and he relented (perhaps in the frailty of his advanced years he did not fancy his chances against a clutch of bikers).  They dutifully buried the ashes and removed all the litter so that no visible evidence of their brief sojourn remained.  The following year, the scenario was repeated, but when they maintained their innocence, recognition smoothed away the farmer’s frown and he told them they were welcome.

The owl’s eerie hoot travelled over the surface of the water, although we could not be sure about the intelligibility of our greetings (the unrepentant impudence of intruders upon our idyll had to be responded to in kind, mostly we contented ourselves with signalling with the large torch and, without fail, I would curse my ineptitude at forgetting to look up “Fuck Off!” in Morse code, our isolation meaning that the nearest Internet café was a 12-mile drive away, my memory always jogged at the most inopportune of moments), tradition stipulating one of a limited range of variants, usually along the lines of “Weegie bastards!” or “Fuck off and die!” yelled in unison.  Not that we really bear any deeply ingrained grudge against the inhabitants of our largest city, some of my best friends come from Glasgow.  The inevitable pang of guilt that accompanies such recklessly juvenile behaviour (in my case at least) assuaged by the fact that the replies bawled in unison are normally so garbled that the likelihood of them deciphering our abuse is negligible.  They probably return to the high rises and permanent dampness with fond recollections of the friendliness of the locals.

Having dropped Lorna off at the train station, the Hungarian nipped into the chippie (its name containing an excruciating pun, The Plaice to Be) for G’s staple, pizza and chips.  Demonstrating a perfect command of the vernacular, he placed his order: “I would like a pizza supper please”.  In a spirit of courteous concern, the man behind the counter warned: “We deep fry our pizzas here”.  “It is for my son, who is Scottish,” the Hungarian replied undaunted, yet still slightly miffed that the subtle linguistic clue of his impeccable deployment of the correct terminology, “supper”, having been overlooked.  Indeed, as a non-native speaker, he had shown greater competence than the customers from South of the Border, who had ineptly asked for “fish and chips”.

When we arrived back, G informed us that Rory and Mattie had retrieved their rods from the old bench and headed off for the Point.  As soon as he had finished eating, I laced up my hiking boots and we traversed the fields to join them.  The Point marked the end of the property belonging to the croft and, as such, the end of our temporary domain.  During childhood holidays, we never dared to venture beyond the boundary fence for fear of slavering hounds bounding towards trespassers to tear them limb from limb or, far worse, a telling off from our parents and possible deprivation of a sweetie ration.  In those days, we were able to clamber over the boulders along the shoreline without having to put on our wellies.  It would always take a while, as there were too many gleaming pebbles, skimmers and shards of broken porcelain (which I always referred to as “pottery”) to add to my collection, disgorged from the peaty depths, perhaps from one of the submerged dwellings of lore.  The ghostly remnants of a warm hearth and comforting cuppa.  The Point possessed one great advantage over the portion of shore nearer the cottage: a sandy beach that jutted out a long way into the loch, ideal for spreading our blankets and splashing around.  Nowadays, however, the boughs of trees conspired with the demand for green electricity to block the easy path and we had to squeeze through wire fences and hack down ferns whose fronds gave shelter to unpleasant parasites (such as the souvenir I had unwittingly brought back from our abortive ascent of Farragon).  Its relative inaccessibility had made the Point attractive to the flock of Greylag geese that had colonised it as their roost.

Once again, we discovered the unmoored white rowing boat, which would have been ideal to borrow for an hour or two, had temptation not been averted by the lack of rollocks, bung and oars.  Mattie and Rory had set up their rods in a sheltered niche just short of the Point, perpetuating their good natured rivalry over who could catch the most, the biggest and who would be the first to land a trout.  I enquired as to why they had not chosen our usual spot and they replied that the burn had been transformed into a raging torrent, flooding the entire beach.  They had lit a bonfire, kindled by the day’s edition of The Times, once Mattie’s favourite paper, in his assessment now debased into an only marginally more highbrow version of The Sun.  It physically pained him to notice one typo after another, the superfluous inverted commas, apostrophes where they didn’t belong and the incorrect use of prepositions (starting on p2 already!) left him in a state of gloom about the decline in standards so profound that he preferred to incinerate the broadsheet rather than inflict its ungrammatical articles upon his eyes.

A small fish was impaled on a stick by the gills, giving rise to their new name for the cove: “Mattie’s Perch”.   The campers opposite started making an unseemly din, prompting Mattie to yell his well-worn salutation.  Rory became paranoid that they might be spying on us with binoculars, as we had not been indulging in any behaviour that might have provoked their whooping.  By way of retaliation, Rory and G simulated masturbation (”I can’t believe you did that in front of your Mum!” Mattie exclaimed in shock) with unfeasibly large invisible tokens of manhood.  Then, in a spontaneous show of disapproval at being observed like some exotic species of lowlife (although, to be fair, by that stage we might easily have been mistaken for such), we performed a tribal jig, the principle novel feature of which involved much animated gesturing with raised middle digits.  Rory swore that he heard our foes’ indignant shouts of: “They’re doing V-signs!” (which does not really say much about the quality of their optical instruments…)  “There’s only one thing for it!” he cried and he and Mattie turned their backs to the enemy, dropped their trousers and wiggled their bare backsides in a double moonbeam.  About thirty seconds later, the valley rumbled with the roar of a pair of Eurofighter Typhoons on low-level manoeuvres, close enough for us to see the pilot of the near aircraft clearly.  Rory quipped: “That’s the RAF for you, one glimpse of the buttocks and it’s ‘Tally-ho, chaps!’”  Mattie voiced regret that he hadn’t mooned the occupants of the cockpits.  We laughed that they might have sought revenge by targeting a tender part of his anatomy (a narrow escape from “a Cruise up the crack”).

Our merriment was interrupted by a tug at Mattie’s line (to Rory’s great initial chagrin, as he was trailing badly in the contest).  However, we again dissolved into fits of laughter when the fish emerged: it was barely bigger than the bait.  We immediately dubbed it “Mattie’s Tiddler”, or “The One That Didn’t get Away”.

As clouds of midgies descended with the definitive retreat of daylight, we decided not to let the irritating little bloodsuckers feast and returned to the comforts of civilisation.

Dodging the thistles and deposits left by the grazing sheep, Rory remarked that when he and Mattie had walked through the golden grass of the meadows earlier with nothing but their fishing gear and the prospect of a cigarette and a conversation it was the nearest thing to heaven he could imagine.

Barring a fat trout sizzling over an open fire and a couple of million pounds accumulating interest in the bank.

 

 

Mattie’s Perch

 

 

Mattie shows off his tiddler

The One That Didn’t Get Away…

 

On the slopes of Creag an Lochain (at conk-out point) we came across this attractive amphibian

 

 

We spotted this slightly less colourful cousin by the path leading across Rannoch Moor to Glencoe

 

 

But in terms of sheer immensity, what could beat the Rannoch Frog Stone?

From the urgency with which my son passed on the message to contact him immediately, I knew my brother’s news could only be bad.  Death swooping down from a clear sky without so much as a wingbeat to alert its unsuspecting prey.  The unmistakeable tremble in the voice.  We had just finished a three-course late lunch and were foraging in different shops to ease the pain of the inevitable eviction at the end of the holiday.

I did not even hear the phone ring before he picked up the receiver.

“Is Dad dead?” in place of a greeting, the logical question, although my mind rejected such a proposition as we had only just seen him and he had seemed in perfect health.

“No, Wayne”.

“A car accident?”

“No, suicide”.

When I plunged the kitchen knife into my stomach, it had been an act of protest, the wine-ignited fury of a spurned lover, a spontaneous act of self-immolation intended to punish another, my left hand permanently bearing the trace of where he retrieved the blade I stubbornly clasped.  He bundled me into a taxi at my request, and I shivered uncontrollably in my hotel room all night.  My cousin was possessed of a dreadful calm, stripping his bed, washing and ironing the linen, folding it neatly, dusting his room, leaving it immaculately tidy, preparing notes, wrapping a birthday present for his brother, feeding the cat and eating lunch before retreating into the recesses of the garden.

My handsome cousin, always carefree, face never clouded with grief, at least in public, warm, friendly, uncomplaining, yet latterly refusing to leave even the confines of his room.  I am familiar with that heaviness in the chest, that immobilising apathy, draining colour from the brightest sky so that its very cheerfulness taunts you with its indifference towards your numbness, the brutal knowledge of the overwhelming futility of our every thought and feeling leeching the taste from each morsel.  I understand.  That loneliness, which the presence of others only serves to exacerbate, which gnaws at the living marrow, the disjointedness of watching them laugh and turn up for work punctually, mouthing the occasional resentment, yet perhaps finding some comfort in the sheer repetitiveness of the routine, the detachment from the gaudy parade of their bickering, conformity and ambition.  Now that I am older, still not reconciled, I know that oblivion will seek me out.  Better to emulate the butterfly in its erratic flight, sipping nectar and spreading its wings in the sunshine as it rests on brick or stone.  Driving through the golden fields of ripe wheat with the mountains spread before me, I could draw on their healing powers and nothing could persuade me to exchange the sound of the wind in the branches and the melancholy hoot of the owl from the opposite shore for the unrelenting silence.  If only we could have reached him, hauled him back.

Here the branches are groaning with pears, purple damsons, blushing apples and ripening peaches.  I had never tasted sweetness to compare with the grapes I picked from the vines entwined around the fence.  So very incongruous when they will soon be gathering to pay their respects in subdued tones over tea and sandwiches, sombre-suited with traditional Scottish dignity and restraint.  The brave faces concealing to perfection the aching hearts.

And still I cannot be with you, my presence symbolically marked by a wreath ordered online with all the trite convenience modern consumer society can offer.  I will enter an alien and sanctified space for you, all of human ingenuity and artifice directed towards the unfeeling heavens in the yearning for something more, creative effort desperately concentrated to propitiate, an act of supplication against the restlessly grinding teeth of time, sandstone depictions of praying hands crumble, even granite cannot withstand the onslaught forever.  I will light a candle, a tiny, guttering flame in the cool vaulted interior alongside so many other offerings and unheeded pleas.

Sleep well, my darling boy, untroubled by regret-tinged dreams or the demons that lurked in your shadow.  Sleep well and know that you will always reside in the hearts of those you left behind.

Welcome to the 231st edition of the Britblog Roundup.  Forgive the uncharacteristic terseness of my introduction, but I have reached an advanced stage of sleep deprivation induced by the relentless onslaught of dust particles on my lungs and the consequent impossibility of drawing breath with ease whilst reclining.

Blogging

It is quite gratifying that for once this section does not begin with outrage at the latest encroachment on our freedom of expression.  Those particular storm clouds have receded, beaten back by the summer sunshine.  For the moment, at least.

Judging by the number of vote-soliciting exercises involving cutting and pasting the rules accompanied by a bit of gentle wheedling or less subtle instructions, the story of the week that in the minds of many of the regular contributors to the Roundup eclipses all else is Iain Dale’s annual call for nominations for inclusion in his Total Politics Guide to Blogging 2009-10.  A bit of recognition can never do any harm, especially in the blogosphere where rewards for effort tend to be restricted to a badge of honour in the sidebar and, given the congregation of hosts and readers of this Roundup it does seem appropriate to publicise the ritual in spite of its limitations.  In Mr Dale’s own words: “There are many ways of measuring a blog’s popularity.  Wikio and Technorati have complicated logarithms which measure the importance of incoming links and traffic.  Google Analytics does it by measuring how many people visit.  But the TP poll gives blog readers the opportunity to vote for the ones they like and visit most often.  It’s not scientific.  It’s impossible to achieve 100% balance and no one pretends it’s perfect”.

Jim Jay of The Daily (Maybe) interviews Councillor Sue Luxton (of the Green Ladywell blog) about the blogging experience with some interesting insights into how her role as a public figure influences what subject matter she feels she can and cannot include.  However, there is plenty to empathise with when she sets out the low points: “trolls – I’ve had petrol heads making quite personal remarks because I had the audacity to support 20mph speed limits, someone accusing me of supporting the Tamil Tigers and others who try to turn any topic into a discussion on their pet issue.  Also writing post after post, not getting any comments, and wondering if anyone is reading it (happens less often now).  Occasionally feeling a slave to the blog or guilty when I haven’t posted after a busy week”.

Politics

In Democracy Diner, Mark Thompson of Mark Reckons serves up a splendid satire of democracy’s blemishes and discontents, continued with aplomb in the comments section.

On the issue of party funding, Stephen Tall of Liberal Democrat Voice asks the pertinent question To tithe or not to tithe?

Jennie Rigg of the eponymous blog is seduced by a meme, cataloguing her political achievements by the tender age of 17 in Monday, bloody Monday and what I was doing at 17.  With admirable humility, Jennie acknowledges the shortcomings of this particular piece of copycat light-heartedness: “At 17 I was elected chair of the debating society on the back of beating the Labour Party into fourth place representing the Monster Raving Loonies in the 1992 mock general election.  My reasons for choosing the party were simple: I was, at that stage, an adherent to [sic] the misguided and childish notion that all politicians were as bad as each other, and the best thing one could do was take the piss.

And this is the key, really.  At 17 I was full of misguided and childish notions.  I had yet to go to University and have On Liberty as a set text by the wonderful Stuart Toddington.  I had yet to be introduced to media spin, and the workings of local government by Dr Mike Feintuck.  And I had yet to develop the research methods which doing a law degree instilled in me.  My ideas were all secondhand.

[...]

I was immature, and so were my political ideas.  I was horribly wrong on many things, and woefully idealistic on others.  And yet I was convinced that I knew The Truth, and that when I was old enough I would Show Them, and that I was going to Change the World.  I was 17″.

How refreshingly realistic an appraisal.  The only person amongst my cohorts at school who was remotely politically aware let alone active at that age was my friend Maggie who supplemented her uniform with a PLO scarf (until barked at to remove it on a monotonously regular basis) and whose casual wear of choice comprised an army surplus stores combat jacket.  Rebelling against her middle-class privilege, she espoused Communism with a fervour only matched by my religious zeal as a fundamentalist born-again Christian.  Whilst she memorised Russian irregular verbs, I prayed for the salvation of her soul and we devoted fruitless hours to the attempt to convert each other over Viennese coffee at an establishment so snotty prams were not permitted to cross its threshold.  She left to study medicine at 17 whilst I stayed on and that was the last I heard of her until very recently when she traced me via my parents’ address and she told me she had become a Buddhist – how typical, a religion without a God!

Responding to a report by the Canadian Privacy Commission, Letters from a Tory explains why Facebook should be illegal: “I think most people have realised that you need to activate some privacy settings on Facebook to prevent your profile being accessed by people who are not your ‘friends’ but, unknown to many, Facebook is still allowed to throw your personal information to developers.  Facebook’s own privacy settings page says: ‘When a friend of yours allows an application to access their information, that application may also access any information about you that your friend can already see’.  So, according to Facebook, if your friend signs up to an extra little programme on Facebook, it is perfectly acceptable to hand over all of YOUR personal information including your picture, date of birth, address, work history, relationship status, all your photos and a whole lot more.  How can this be legal in the UK?  How can we have such little respect for people’s privacy that we allow a company to just hand over extremely personal information?  Now, you could argue that no-one is forced to use Facebook and you don’t have to put too much personal information on there, but the way Facebook is set up deliberately sets the default options to allow sharing of your personal details.  This is totally unacceptable.  Every website and company operating online should work on a simple premise: you can’t give out my personal information unless I actively allow you to.  Preying on people’s ignorance or lack of IT skills in order to harvest personal information is wrong and Facebook is clearly not the only offender in this respect.  However, unless we put in place some privacy laws that not only stop the paparazzi snooping on people’s private lives but also stops companies stealing personal information without permission, this situation will only get worse”.

I unreservedly share the author’s qualms, which is precisely why I have avoided setting up an account, adopting instead a variety of Internet aliases for each of my online activities (blogging, publishing academic articles, gaming and so on).  Perhaps there is a generational factor at play, as my teenage son carelessly strews details of his identity all over cyberspace without batting an eyelid, much less losing sleep over it.  However, I have serious objections to the de facto uneraseability of a profile and the commercial exploitation of my every whim (true, I am not always consistent in that I do own a supermarket loyalty card, though I try not to think too hard about the implications, whereas a survey that the local postman popped through my letterbox on the pretext of cutting waste by eliminating non-targeted advertising was treated with derision, promptly consigned to the paper recycling pile, as it was breathtakingly shameless in prying into the minutiae of my existence, seeking to siphon information on everything from my income level, the extent to which I spoil my Guinea pigs, holiday plans and the like).

Facebook has come under fire for perceived moral muddle-headedness, as illustrated by Andre Oboler’s piece in The Guardian, Facebook gives hatred a hand: “Facebook has decided not to remove groups that deny the Holocaust.  This policy contradicts its own ’statement of rights and responsibilities’, which clearly states ‘you will not post content which is hateful’.  Facebook seems to be ignorant of the inherent danger of Holocaust denial, the deeply hateful nature of it, and international efforts against racism.  It either fails to understand the responsibility it has to society, or it has placed profit far above morality”.

His conclusion: “The internet requires regulation, just as film, television and computer games do.  If companies such as Facebook abdicate that responsibility, it suggests government intervention is needed to prevent an internet-powered surge in racial hatred.  The spread of racism and hate is not something that can be left to chance or the whims of the private sector.  Working against hate, bullying and racism must be part of the price companies pay when they offer an online social environment as their product.  In the meantime, more than 68,000 people have joined the Facebook group ‘United Against Holocaust Denial On Facebook’.  Facebook, get the message and remove the hate!”

In Ban the Internet!!! Charlotte Gore takes issue with Mr O in no uncertain terms: “Requires?  Surely it is not the internet that requires the regulation.  It is politicians and idiots like Andre Oboler, the article’s author, that demand and ‘require’ these things to be regulated.  It’s a subtle distinction, but it’s always worth remembering who benefits?

It’s not even worth debating this moron’s specific argument.  The point is he wants to use fascist tools against fascists he doesn’t like, as a way of trying to stem the tide of fascism on the internet.  Anti-Fascism FAIL.

Free Speech is a wonderful, wonderful thing Andre.  You brush it aside too easily”.

Personally, I agree that Mr Oboler’s approach is too heavy-handed.  Surely the odious Holocaust deniers and their ilk are already contained behind the cordon sanitaire of mainstream opinion.  Let them slaver in their delusional little circle of the woefully ignorant.  Their own words ought to be enough to condemn them in the eyes of any sane individual.  Let those so inclined mark their disapproval by joining the group Mr Oboler mentions if they are afraid that their silence might be misinterpreted as agreement (I find the increasing pressure to take a public stand by participating in various “Not in my name” actions slightly worrying, as it parallels the “guilty until proven innocent” attitude currently functioning as our Government’s operating assumption.  Even the overwhelming need I feel to distance myself from the unsavoury villains by including this crystal-clear disclaimer in itself constitutes proof of the existence of the imperative to avoid being tainted by – erroneous – association.  The fact that the sensible majority would never vote for the slobbering throwbacks of the extreme right is more than amply reflected in the tiny number of seats that they obtain.  Let me reiterate: tacit approval is not the correct conclusion to arrive at if I do not take to the streets in protest that they won any seats at all).

Matt Wardman of The Wardman Wire paints a chilling picture of how miscarriages of justice and socially corrosive hysteria can result from well-intentioned efforts to clean up the Internet in Is Operation Ore on the Skids at Last?  Can we now roll back paedomania?

In days of yore, criminals were put in the stocks and pelted with rotten cabbage leaves and overripe tomatoes transmuting community anger at their misdeeds into highly tangible form.  These days, as the Bring Back Birching Brigade would no doubt lament, the tearaways of today get off lightly by comparison.  In Community Payback: Modern Branding, Harpymarx castigates Jack Straw’s plans for inflicting humiliation upon juvenile miscreants between the ages of 10 and 17 by forcing them to carry out their community service sentences in attire that quite unambiguously advertises their penance, namely, high-visibility jackets with the slogan “Community Payback”.

One of the dilemmas facing contemporary society is how to reconcile respect for human dignity and humaneness (minimising distress) with traditional morality, in short, how to confront those who have crossed the line of acceptable behaviour with their transgression and mete out a fitting punishment.  Some contend that we inhabit a “victim culture” where self-proclaimed experts are soft on deviancy and devote their energies to absolving the perpetrators of responsibility whilst failing to give adequate redress to those left damaged.  Against this backdrop, plans to attach electrodes to the brains of hoodies to gauge their emotional responses to images of angry faces and to attribute gang membership to defective genes fit in with the overall logic.  Harpymarx does not approve: “I am highly cynical and sceptical about these studies as they smack of biological reductionism and determinism.  Human behaviour is viewed through a biological vacuum.  There is more to us than DNA and biology, humans are far more complex.

Actually, on the subject of scanning brains, here’s a thought.  Instead of scanning the brains of NL clones (I wonder if there’s a ‘NL gene’?) how about checking whether they have a backbone…?”

Dame Suzi Leather of the Charity Commission, has been causing ructions by threatening to withdraw the charitable status of two private schools if they do not overhaul their bursaries schemes to make more places available to children from less wealthy backgrounds.  Cue righteous indignation from Simon Heffer in The Telegraph: “Last week I visited a superb public school, which had done me the honour of asking me to present the prizes on speech day.  It, like many private schools I have seen, was no nursery of privilege or affluence.  It is a place that allows parents on modest incomes to buy for their children the sort of education the state sector largely fails to provide: and fails to provide after 12 years of a sectarian government that said its first three priorities were ‘education, education, education’.  Such parents make enormous sacrifices to send their children to these schools.  These are all clichés, I know, but let me repeat them: they drive battered cars, they have frugal holidays or no holidays at all, they re-mortgage their houses.  They expect no sympathy: it is their choice.  But it is a choice the utter failure of the Government forces upon them”.

Juliette of the new adventures of juliette walks off victorious with the pun of the week award in her bittersweetly humorous take on the subject, Opportunity Mocks: “Without readily available bursaries on tap, you’re going to get these bright kids going to the local comprehensive with their friends from primary school.  Part of a dull, undistinguished, lumpen mass of anonymous humanity.  In this environment, they’ll quickly get absorbed into the ebb and flow of comprehensive life – and learn to be exactly the same as everyone else.

When, with the help of a bursary, they could be standing out, unique and special, making the most of their individual potential and abilities.  Like their unique ability not to be able to afford the school trip to Verbier.  And their unique ability to be the only kid in the class without their own tennis racket.  And their unique ability to have their life made a misery 24/7 from the moment they rock up in a ten-year-old Nissan with the cheapest trunk known to humankind.

Given a bursary, these children will be in a position to discover sports and activities they’ve never even dreamed of before – and at which they may quickly come to excel.  The 100 Metres Running Away.  The inscrutable Oriental art of Bushido, which involves hiding behind a bush when you see the rich cool kids coming.  They’ll even have the opportunity to develop their potential in the dramatic arts, as they try to convince the matron they have a temperature so they won’t have to face the others in the changing rooms for games.  And all of this will take place in the glorious no-expense-spared settings that you’d normally expect to pay a hell of a lot of money for”.

One of Juliette’s replies to a comment brought memories flooding back: “Being a nerd at the local comp is also better, because – no matter how bad things get – you can console yourself with a small crumb of knowledge.

Barring an unforeseen meeting with Steven Gerrard or a big break in Nuts magazine, the local Kewl Chix are going to end their lives weighing twenty stone and sitting behind a Tesco checkout.

Tragically, this is a consolation you don’t get in a posh school – where even this small and fragile future hope can be filed straight under NGFH (Not Gonna Fucking Happen)…”

Although I won various bursaries (beating the crap out of private school pupils in the process), being labelled the “swot” consigned me to outcast status.  Two particularly unpleasant incidents haunt me even from the safe distance of over two decades: having bricks lobbed at me, which thankfully missed, as I was determined not to give my tormentors the satisfaction of breaking into a run to escape their ire and being abducted at knife point by a fellow pupil who forced me into a classroom full of my detractors for interrogation.  I dulled the pain of isolation through study and the church, driven by the desire not to suffer the kind of fate Juliette so eloquently sketches out (in which undertaking I succeeded, apart from the 20-stone bit!).  Indeed, I did not mingle with the products of a fee-paying education until university, where they oozed a confidence and sense of entitlement that left me tongue-tied and intimidated in their wake.  We dubbed them the “OK Yahs” because of their plummy accents and took pleasure in outperforming them.  Social mobility through education will always be dear to my heart, as it permitted me to escape the dreary confines of my housing estate and home country.  Having been on the receiving end of class hatred, with zero expectations as its most muted and least virulent form, I believe it is vital that the means be provided for children from disadvantaged backgrounds to unfold their potential.  I achieved my aims through a combination of natural ability, hard graft and refusing to listen to those who were hell bent on keeping me down and I do not have a recipe for an ideal policy.

Molly of Gaian Economics outlines Ten Ways to Challenge Capitalism That Wouldn’t Frighten Your Grandmother, whilst Natalie of Philobiblon cites A small example of how our economy went terribly wrong.  The latter takes Harry Whewell’s The seeds of an idea from 1980 as its starting point, in which the journalist ponders the devastating impact of something as seemingly trivial as buying bird seed instead of scattering yesterday’s crusts over the lawn: “He [the owner of the local garden and pet food store] had no idea why people were no longer content to feed the birds in their garden on scraps, as had been done from time immemorial, and he didn’t seem very interested in the question either, but it niggled away at me.  Old ladies and lonely flat dwellers had to buy tinned meat for their cats because the meat they bought for themselves had little or no waste, but was there anybody who could not find crumbs in their cake tin, stale slices in their bread bin, and bits of bacon rind in the sink tidy, enough to keep half a dozen sparrows, two blackbirds, and a robin happy?

Taking an early morning walk on Wednesday another thought struck me.  Where did the packers get their supplies?  Were the wild grasses harvested from woods, lanes, and fields, perhaps by country children who made pocket money thereby?  If so – and it seemed more likely than that they were grown as crops on specialised holdings – then might not this be a rather bizarre way of interfering with nature?  A charm of Cheshire goldfinches might find one autumn that its normal supplies of thistle seeds had totally disappeared, the plants having been stripped by foraging schoolboys and the seeds sold to pet shops in Manchester”.

Natalie counts the environmental cost: “And when you think about it, he’s absolutely right.  (And to add in today’s concerns: all of that seed was shipped, using fossil fuel, to the mixing plant, packaged in plastic bags made from petroleum products, shipped likewise to a superlarket, and very likely carried home in a private car).

Meanwhile, the same people who are carefully pouring this into the bird feeder, are most likely throwing large quantities of perfectly good food – certainly good for the birds – into the waste bin, from where it is carried in lorries to a landfill site, where it will eventually produce globally warming methane”.

Looking up from the keyboard, I can see the greenish ball of fat and seeds dangling from the veranda in plastic netting for the consumption of the pair of blue tits that nest in the brick by the guest bedroom’s window year after year.  Their broods have been nurtured on the stuff and we never cease to take pleasure in the sight of them abseiling down the lace, an acrobatic feat that their rivals, the sparrows, cannot match.  There is no excuse for us not to deposit the uneaten rolls on the sill, although larger birds, such as the wood pigeons that currently forage for the fallen leftovers from the blue tits’ frenetic excavations, might be attracted in greater numbers.

In Mainstream media’s responsibility? Vicky of Green Girls Global expresses her dismay at GMTV presenters for extolling the virtues of cheap labels, glossing over their production in sweatshops in developing countries: “How opportunistic and irresponsible, in a time of economic instability and money worries, to tell a mass audience that this is the way to enjoy fashion cheaply; not to mention patronising coming from a group of women who earn salaries most of us could only dream of.  If they wanted to promote fashion that doesn’t cost a lot of money why not talk about charity shops, vintage shops, customising clothes and even the high street shops with more positive ethical credentials?  Traditional values of designer fashion were to create beautiful, well made and stylish garments that would last for years, not some throw-away item to be bought for one night out”.

Feminism

Penny Red fulminates against Conservative Party social engineering policies, demonstrating why for her the term “Compassionate Conservative” is and remains an oxymoron, in Torygeddon 1: Every Family Matters?: “The Family – what does it mean, this ephemeral concept that makes Tory policymakers so very moist and excited?  It doesn’t mean any old bunch of people bound together by blood and love.  Ian Duncan Smith’s vision of The Family as propounded in his new policy paper, Every Family Matters, is the relatively recent kitsched-out 1950s incarnation of the nuclear heterosexual brood: you know, one man and one woman bound in holy wedlock, living together with their genetic offspring, him in the office, her in the kitchen.  Well, that rules out my family for a start, and probably yours too.  And yet Tory wallahs – not even in power yet but already slavering to sink their teeth into Labour’s social reforms – get all gooey over The Family.  All you need do is have a shyster mention ‘ordinary families’ as distinguished from the rest of us scum, and Tory spinsters start wetting their little knickers.  Every Family Matters wants to actively force men and women, who have been drifting gratefully away from the ball-and-chain-live-with-it moral mentality for generations, back into the heteronormative marriage model.  If Tory plans are initiated, they will institute a compulsory ‘cooling off’ period of three months before divorce proceedings, offer tax breaks and benefits bribes for married couples, and demolish Labour plans to offer the same recognition to unmarried couples and civil partners, as well as boring us all with a whole pile of ‘Pro-Family’ rhetoric”.

She quotes Johann Hari’s reaction to the document, which strikes a blow against Tory orthodoxy, When divorce is the right choice: “At first glance, the sociological evidence shows that the kids of broken homes or single parents are more likely to drop out of school, slip into crime, and become drug addicts than children whose parents stay together.  So the solution is, to Cameron, obvious: keep parents together using the tax code and thse problems will slowly be reduced.  Stop Jimmy’s mum and dad splitting, and Jimmy will be more likely to stay in school, on the right side of the law, and off drugs.  Isn’t that what the stats show?

A major study has just shown that this is based on a simple misunderstanding of the evidence.  Professor Kelly Musick and Dr Ann Meier of Cornell University have carried out a study of children whose parents stay together for the sake of kids.  We all know some: parents who can’t stand each other, but have made a hard-headed decision to stay together nonetheless.  They are exactly the kind of people who would be glued back together by Cameron’s policies if they succeeded in their goal.

It turns out their children do worse than any other group – including those of divorcees or single mums.  If you are raised by arguing parents who stayed together only for you, then you are 33 percent more likely to become a binge-drinking teen than if you have a single parent, for example.

Having parents locked in live-in combat damages children more than having separated parents, or just one single parent – and the damage lasts well into adulthood.  The offspring are more likely to have bad marriages themselves, and more likely to have children at a very young age.

It makes sense.  Would Jimmy rather have a happy mum and dad who live apart, or depressed, stressed, angry parents sharing a bed?

So Cameron’s first glance at the figures turns out to be wrong.  He was comparing divorcees and single parents to happy two-parent families who want to stick together.  But happy two parent families who want to stick together are not what his policy would create.  If he had an effect at all, he would be tying together miserable couples who would otherwise have split.  To assume you would get the same sociological outcomes from them is an Enron-style accounting error”.

He rejects the hankering after a more innocent world viewed through the distorting rose-tinted lenses of nostalgia: “In the real past – as opposed to the phantasm of Tory creation – divorce was low not because every couple was living in a happy wholesome hearth, but because the door of divorce was barred shut.  You don’t have to read much Victorian fiction to see that no matter how much a couple detested each other, they were trapped behind binding vows.  Women, of course, suffered worst, since they were largely trapped in the home, and if in desperation they tried to flee, they lost their children, their homes and their reputations.

Far from being a time we should pine for and try inexpertly to rebuild, we should be proud we have left this behind for a more civilised and compassionate world.  Isn’t it a strength that we accept that marriages fail, not because of wickedness or moral laxity, but because of ordinary human incompatibility?  Yes, it brings some problems – but this study underlines that they are far less than the problems of imprisoning people in dead marriages, and lecturing them it’s for their own moral health”.

Clare Laxton holds one of the almost completely overlooked aspects of the Coroners and Justice Bill up to scrutiny, its implications for women who kill their partners after years of abuse in Real Justice?: “Clause 44 looks at loss of control as a partial defence to murder.  The important part of this clause for me, is the fact that a person cannot be convicted of murder if their loss of self control has a qualifying trigger.

Clause 45 deals with that ‘qualifying trigger’, stipulating that fear of serious violence from the victim is a qualifying trigger for loss of self control and subsequent murder/assault.  This means that women who kill their partners after prolonged abuse and violence [or] fear of violence from their partner will have this counted as reason for their actions.

Clause 46 abolishes the defence of ‘provocation’ that is often used by men in cases when the prolonged abuse and violence that they have brought on their partner has finally ended in their death.  This defence often means that while women serve life sentences for the murder of their violent partners, men often get away with suspended sentences or short sentences because they claim they were ‘provoked’ by their partner”.

Julie Bindel comments on this discrepancy in Driven to kill: “Men commit almost 90% of domestic homicides, and the victims are their female partners – who have often been previously battered by their killers.  On average, two women die every week as a result of domestic violence.  For men who kill their partners, the defence of provocation is tailor-made.  Provocation will reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter if the defendant can show that things were said or done to provoke them, causing them to experience a sudden loss of control.  In such cases they will often justify their actions by claiming that they ‘just snapped’ or ’saw red’.  Judges have been known to express their sympathy for men who claim they were nagged or cheated on by their partners, but often appear to have little for women who kill after being raped by their partners or experiencing domestic violence.  This tends to be because when women who are being regularly beaten by their partners kill, their dominant emotions are usually fear or despair – not exactly a sudden, explosive ‘loss of self-control’”.

In Eve Was Framed (Chatto and Windus, London, 1992), Helena Kennedy explores the concept of provocation in law in greater depth: “Provocation is a defence to murder and only to murder.  In any other case, such as assault, it can only provide mitigation.  If a defence of provocation is successful and reduces the charge to one of manslaughter, the court still has to pass an appropriate sentence.  Women invoke self-defence or provocation defences infrequently, and the reason is that the legal standards were constructed from a male perspective and with men in mind, and women have a problem fulfilling the criteria.  the question for the jury in a case where provocation is raised is whether a reasonable man might have suffered temporary and sudden loss of self-control so that he was no longer ‘master of his own mind’ in circumstances similar to those described in the evidence.  The issue is one of opinion, not law, but the judge has considerable power in the way in which he presents provocation to the jury.

Little account is taken of the cultural differences between men and women and the way that our socialisation affects our responses.  Women are much less likely to respond to provocation immediately, for obvious physical and psychological reasons, and therefore self-defence and provocation are less available to them.  But the legal standards are built upon ideas of instant ignition and a hotheaded rush to action.  The spark has to be immediate, an assault which requires self-protection or a blow, a curse, an insult that goes to the core of a man’s being.  judges try to create a parallel analogy, the trigger to violent reaction being terrible insults against a woman’s chastity or her way of life, both of which are male ideas of what might make a woman run amok.

the majority of women convicted of homicide kill a member of their own family or someone with whom they are intimate or whom they look after.  It is rare for a woman to kill a stranger.  In 1987, 36 per cent of those convicted of murder had killed their husbands (a crime which in former times was indicted as treason).  In the majority of those killings there was a history of cumulative violence towards the woman, yet a significant number would fail the test for provocation.  Fortunately for most of the women – or unfortunately from another perspective – the toll of violence usually means they are able to invoke a defence of diminished responsibility, suffering as they almost invariably are from depressive illness or post traumatic stress disorder as a result of the abuse.  By and large this reliance on their psychiatric state takes the sting out of the other defences, because the women are then sentenced with appropriate compassion, but there will always be women who slip through the net.  There is also the principled concern that women should not so readily be pushed towards a pathological explanation for their behaviour, an argument which seldom troubles women looking at prison bars, who understandably value their liberty and the companionship of their children above all else.

It is well established that retaliation and revenge have no place in our legal code, and if a woman is seen to bide her time and to strike when her attacker’s defences are low, she is seen as playing dirty and loses the protection of the law, unless she can invoke mental disturbance.  It matters not that she may have been subjected to years of beating and may feel that no other avenue is available to her.  If she makes a deliberate decision to kill she is guilty of murder, even if at the time she is no longer mistress of her own mind.  Temperature seems to be all important.  If the crime is to be reduced to manslaughter the act has to be seen to be in the ‘heat of the moment’ with no time to ‘cool off’.

The immediacy principle makes no sense when the provocation takes the form of long-term abuse.  When a person lives with persistent violence and alcoholism she often becomes overwhelmed.  Her whole life is out of control.  She would not be thinking rationally for some time, and her feelings often would not manifest themselves as ’snapping’, in the form of the crazed outburst, but may seem more controlled: a snapping in slow motion, the final surrender of frayed elastic” (pp199-201).

Once again at The F-Word, Anna Corbett chronicles the epiphany that fundamentally altered her view of the world in Confessions of a brand new feminist: “I was sat in one of the computer rooms of my university trying to find the motivation to start an essay.  next to the computers as usual were leaflets advertising various events, sports clubs and rooms for rent.  Procrastinating, I started to read through them and came across a small slip of paper from the women’s committee.  I wish I’d kept it.  It was only a few short sentences on how careers traditionally considered men’s preserve, such as the police, were better paid than those traditionally followed by women, such as nursing.  This, among numerous other issues, contributed to the pay gap between men and women.  An idea swam through my mind that would characterise my next few months: I’d never thought about it like that before”.

Culture

Carl Gardener at The Wardman Wire reviews Sacha Baron-Cohen’s latest outrageous incarnation, Brüno, discovering serious social critique beneath the brash surface: “Yes, the film gets lots of laughs from gay stereotypes: Brüno loves sex with incredible mechanical contraptions, has to call hotel security to get him and his boyfriend out of chains, and calls his agent while having his anus bleached.  But the real target is the homophobia and bigotry of others.  the climax, at Straight Dave’s TV fight show, is the most hilarious, frightening expose of violent redneck homophobia you could see – Brüno needs a fence to protect him from American men so pumped up with anger at the idea of homosexuality that baron-Cohen really is in danger.  And one of the rednecks is brought to touching, sickening tears at the thought that even this oasis of true butchness could be tainted by the gays”.

Over at Liberal England, Jonathan Calder is offering a chance to Win James Robertson Justice.  Not literally, as in a set of reliquary bones, but a copy of James Hogg’s biography of the great British actor.  All you have to do is answer five questions correctly – hurry on over!

In a beautifully evocative essay showing how celebrity biographies become subtly (and insidiously) interwoven with our own recollections, Martin Newell of The Wild man of Wivenhoe reminisces on the demise of Brian Jones, The Blond Stone: “I couldn’t get the news out of my head.  I think it was then that I realised that The Sixties, if there really were such a thing, was over and by default, so was my late childhood.  I now realise that I had a kind of breakdown at the time.  I didn’t recognise it as such but certain others did and after quitting my job I was dragged to the doctor’s by my mother and medicated with some rather crude drugs.  Poor old Brian.  The establishment and the straight people all around me were actually glad he was dead.  I couldn’t believe the world could be so cruel and nasty.  I pored over every detail of the circus surrounding his funeral.  I had my haircut as closely like his as I could.  I looked at pictures of him.  I wrote poems and songs about him, and as you will imagine, they were the work of a sixteen year old boy of fragile mindset”.

Miscellaneous

Philip Wilkinson of English Buildings draws our attention to a once ubiquitous item of street furniture, as embedded in the British consciousness as the other two icons in the same shade of red, double-decker bus and the postbox, but which with the victory of the mobile is rapidly attaining endangered species status, the old-fashioned phone box.  I echo him in supporting the Adopt a Kiosk initiative launched by BT: “The kiosk, minus its payphone, remains in situ, as a visual amenity, for future generations”.  Settle Town Council has converted one such booth into the Gallery on the Green, whose curators welcome postcard-sized submissions.

The Ill Man similarly encourages us to make a simple contribution towards making our urban surroundings a little less bleak with another idea I wholeheartedly endorse, the Ten Thousand Bulb Appeal: “Just think about that for a minute.  A wave of colour amongst the concrete and tarmac, defying the fag butts and making a rather drab corner of the city look so much better.  This is what we’re trying to achieve at our Townhead garden site currently tended to by [former Britblog Roundup host] Clairwil, Michael and myself”.

When you consider that the city in question is one whose mythology revolves around poverty, children dressed in hand-me-downs lurking in dank tenements never penetrated by a ray of sunlight, but with the warm-hearted generosity and unpretentious welcome of the working class (the difference between the largest agglomeration in Scotland and the country’s snooty capital neatly encapsulated in the witticism that if you arrive in genteel Edinburgh at around five in the evening your host will begrudgingly enquire “You’ll have had your tea?” whereas on the opposite coast, the citizens of Glasgow will phrase the query slightly differently, “You’ll be wanting your tea then?”), all the more reason to donate directly or help out by dropping by the Squidoo site dedicated to the work of the intrepid Guerilla Gardeners.

Tarrying for a moment longer on the floral theme, Ruth of Meanwhile, here in France transports us to the Lavender Harvest.

Cocktails and Records introduces us to a list of The most liveable cities in the world…ever! as compiled by Monocle magazine.  Without giving too much away, only two in the Top Ten are located outside of Europe, none in the USA (sniggers with Schadenfreude).  Having spent three years of my life in one of them, Copenhagen, I was reminded of the culture shock that awaited me as I moved to my present abode of Waffle Central, swapping the bracing sea breeze for the stuffy bourgeois uptightness of the place of my employ.  I was seven months pregnant at the time, the prospect of single parenthood weighing me down as heavily as the two suitcases containing my accumulated worldly goods.  As the escalators were out of order, it took me over two hours to emerge from the station, the commuters disgorged from their trains strategically averting their eyes (this unwillingness to spontaneously help the vulnerable par for the course in a country where teenagers do not give up their seats in buses and trams for the elderly and infirm even as the latter’s arms are nearly ripped out of their sockets when the vehicle lurches at foolhardy speed round a corner).

David Keen at The Wardman Wire gives a blow-by-blow (if not quite wicket by wicket) account of Day 3 of the England versus Australia match in Can you sing ‘Jerusalem’ in Cardiff?

Barrister Simon Myerson of Pupillage and How to Get It, which as its title suggests, dispenses handy tips for those aspiring to an analogous position within the legal profession, sets out the results of a survey rating the courtesy or lack thereof with which job applications were treated by Chambers across England and Wales.

The downside of the media obsession with swine flu is vividly evoked by Suzi Brent of Nee Naw: “I’ve just come back from three weeks’ leave and found the service absolutely inundated with calls from people who think they have swine flu.  No one seems to have taken any notice whatsoever of the NHS’ advice, which is to ring your GP if you are worried that you may have a touch of hamthrax.  (The only expectation is if someone develops life threatening symptoms as a result of the flu, which is extremely rare and usually only seen in people who had poor health to start with).  No, the general public have cleverly decided that they want to take their piggy germs to a hospital where they can spread it to thousands of sick and pregnant people and on their way infect a poor ambulance crew who will then go off sick for a week, leaving our resources even more stretched”.

They ought to take a leaf out of the book of poor Susanne Lamido, Britblog stalwart, who sensibly contacted her doctor to ascertain what was wrong: “Was informed it is so common round here they have stopped testing people – got to take Paracetamol to reduce the fever and to keep the temperature down.  However, if I have real difficulty breathing then and only then it’s time to call an ambulance.  In the meantime somebody healthy has to go to collect a document entitling me to antiviral medication.  Have been advised rest, keep at home as much as possible and avoid close contact with children”.

I am sure that I speak on behalf of all readers and nominators when I wish you a swift recovery and return to blogging, Susanne!

Finally, staying with the medical theme, but on a lighter note, Reynolds of Random Acts of Reality recounts Catching Something Other Than A Cold: “‘I’m going to have to take a look,’ I tell the woman and she lifts up her skirt to show me her genitals.

In training school there were two things that we were told to be wary of causing offence, the first was traipsing around Mosques in our boots.  The second thing was that Muslim women don’t want men who aren’t their husband looking at their bare flesh – strangely enough, when someone is about to deliver a baby they don’t seem to care.  I would guess that common sense tends to trump religion when you (and your husband) are scared and in pain.

I tilt my head to one side, trying to visualise exactly where the baby is.  Then she pushes again and I deftly side-step the gush of amniotic fluid as it shoots past my ear, it’s nice and clear which suggests that the baby hasn’t pooed in it.  The un-professional part of me gives myself a mental high five for not getting caught by the spurting body fluids”.

Next week’s Roundup will be hosted by cabalamat at Amused Cynicism.  As always, nominations should be submitted to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com  For a full statement of editorial policy, a list of the upcoming hosts and a complete archive of the Roundup since its inception, consult the Britblog Roundup Central website.

In Hungary, the European Parliament election campaign is in full swing.

 

 

 

Welcome to the 218th edition of the Britblog Roundup where in a nightmare vision, speakers blare the incessant admonition of our Wise and Glorious Leaders to:

“Keep young and beautiful,

It’s your duty to be beautiful;

Keep young and beautiful

If you want to be loved.

Don’t fail to do your stuff

With a little powder and a puff,

Keep young and beautiful

If you want to be loved.

If you’re wise, exercise all the fat off,

Take it off, off-a here, off-a there”

Al Dubin, 1933

Or, adapting the lyrics somewhat: “If you want to receive treatment on the NHS (though we will probably send you packing on the grounds that your problems are all self-inflicted)”.  Nothing epitomises better the intellectual vacuity of the present Government than its preaching about lifestyles to distract from the assault it has launched on our fundamental freedoms.

Politics

James Purnell, Work and Pensions Secretary’s has come under fire for his latest bright idea to cut the welfare bill by depriving alcoholics of benefits unless they submit to the humiliation of penance on a government treatment programme, a measure, which surely would entail constant interference, monitoring and intrusion if it were to have a hope of being implemented, erasing forever the distinction between public and private.  As if the idea were not offensive enough in itself, Mr Purnell compounds his error by dressing up a punitive measure as an act of compassion: “He said: ‘We need to look through the eyes of the person defeated by an addiction that keeps them out of work and on the outside of the community and give them the help they need.

‘But we can’t abandon anyone to long periods on benefits without help to overcome problems.  So that’s why we are going to look at the arrangements for alcoholics on benefits, just as we did for problem drug users, so that people get the help they need to get sober, to get their life back and get back to work’.

He also condemned Tory proposals to withdraw benefits from unmarried couples.  He said: ‘We know couples don’t marry for money, but often they do split up because of money worries’”.

The implication here is that Labour is less stuffily judgmental as they are only going to punish true social inadequates.  Gordon Brown may peer into the living room, but David Cameron wants to police the bedroom, branding you as deficient for failing to seal your covenant of love with a band of gold.

Unsurprisingly, Purnell has attracted derision from various quarters.  Dr John Crippen of NHS Blog Doctor summarises the general mood in Attacking the drunks: “Another bit of headline grabbing, focus group driven cynical cruelty from this failing government.  Declaring ‘war on the work shy’ is always worth a vote.  And yes, there are some boozers who are both on the piss and taking the piss.  But, mostly, those sad people with chronic alcohol problems are an inadequate lot who need sympathy and support.

‘What is an alcoholic?’ I have not got a clue.  I long since stopped using the word.  I don’t know what it means.  It conjures up pictures of vagrants on park benches with bottles of strong cider and Carlsberg Special brew half concealed in brown paper bags.  And, for sure, some of these people are victims of alcohol.  Some of them are ex-servicemen (Falklands, Iraq, Afghanistan).  Some of them are schizophrenics.  How will cutting their benefits help?  Conventional use of the word ‘alcoholic’ does not encompass the housewife drinking two bottles of wine a day; the solicitor who has a bottle of wine with his lunch and two more at night; or the politician and his advisers, drinking the hours away in one of the many subsidised bars of the House of Commons”.

The unacknowledged class dimension becomes pretty apparent here with the ability to maintain a front of respectability crucial to avoiding the scrutiny of the busybodies.  Only the blatant drop-outs would be penalised.  It is more than a little disheartening that the supposed champion of the vulnerable now gets its kicks out of putting the boot into those who cannot retaliate, whose ingenuity and energy are devoted to survival on paltry allowances.

The good Doctor is only too aware of the pernicious effects such a policy would be likely to have, exacerbating shortcomings, which already leave the ailing in the lurch: “There are a number of people who, long before they turn to alcohol, cannot function at any level.  They become reclusive.  They struggle by without engaging with their fellow man.  Some eventually become alcohol dependent.  Alcohol is their refuge, their hiding place.  The alcohol is the symptom of their underlying problem.  It is not the problem itself.  More than half the people with diagnosed psychiatric problems drink too much.  Sadly, those who above all should be there to help them usually let them down.  I talk of course of the medical profession.  Approach a doctor smelling of alcohol and he will begin to lose interest, but not before he has made a pompous remark in your notes: ‘Smelt of C2H5OH at 5.00pm’.  Approach a doctor looking down and out and smelling of alcohol and he will take no interest at all.  Even the psychiatrists are intolerant.  Our local alcohol ’support’ unit throws out anyone who arrives looking or smelling the worse for wear from alcohol.  Talk me through that”.

Neil Robertson at Liberal Conspiracy likewise castigates the stone-hearted secretary in Purnell’s silly plan for alcoholics, pointing to the difficulties besetting the idea, beginning with the definition of an alcoholic, adding up to some fairly insurmountable obstacles: “(…) how is the state going to identify alcoholics?  The people who work in job centres are perfectly good at their jobs, but those jobs only involve following pre-approved computer procedures for eight hours a day.  None of these people are trained in medicine or psychology, and therefore won’t be qualified to label people as alcoholics, much less terminate their benefits for it.

How does the government get around that?  Will they subject every claimant to a full medical?  Will they perform breathalyzers on everyone who walks through the door?  Or will they be more discreet, and just ask staff to walk around council estates with clip boards and ask them to count how many cans of Special brew are left in recycling bins?”

Clairwil of the eponymous blog also takes Purnell to task in a truly spectacular demolition of the plans Benefit Scrounging Scum! , illustrating the reality beyond the Victorian era rhetoric of the “undeserving poor” from her dealings with the proposed victims of his “spongers’” cull: “First up is a fellow, also called James, a lovely man, very polite, reeks of piss, wears a dressing gown as an overcoat, can’t go anywhere without his mother, talks about his cat all the time and would like to join the police force.  For some reason employers seem to be reluctant to employ him.  I’d love Jamesey to tell us where we’ve gone wrong and identify exactly what sort of work this man is fit for because his department declared him fit for work despite him suffering a wee touch of Paranoid Schizophrenia.  he scored zero points on the Incapacity Benefit Descriptors”.

As Clairwil then demonstrates via a link, a benefits medical is far from a pleasant experience. harrowing even to read, reproduce an excerpt (preserving the spelling and style of the original) written by a 41-year-old man, routine humiliation: “He asked if I has seen a Psychiatrist which I said yes he asked when which I said yesterday and showed him a letter to which he said ‘that’s not a psychiatrist that’s a clinical psychologist’ at this point I felt i was being told off he also told my wife when she tried to answer a question to shh don’t answer the questions and who are you I started to get upset as the questions went on he continued in this matter taking no notice of what I was trying to say to the point where I broke down completely and started to cry uncontrollably and become upset sobbing I said I had worked all my life and this is the only time I have asked for anything and I was being treat like this I was sobbing at this time my wife started to cry and said is this really worth your health I would rather do without than you go through this he the just asked the next question then when I couldn’t answer for crying he said if you don’t go on with this you will lose you benefit I said I felt like walking out and he repeated you will lose your benefit do you want to go on.  I muttered yes and we continued however I was not in fit state to continue sobbing and crying.  When I was asked could I wash or shave and I replied due to depression I do not feel like getting shaved and do not have the energy he said what about getting washed I replied I cant do nothing I spending my days in a dressing gown in bed or just throwing something on he then said ‘do you like to smell’ and ‘do you change your underwear’  I replied when im depressed I do nothing I cant face life I feel like I want to dye sobbing all the time”.

The intrepid Clairwil’s coup de grâce is to expose Purnell’s sheer gall in yanking away the safety net to leave those in free fall to hit the sawdust full force whilst milking a slightly different benefits system for all it is worth: “Is there nothing an MP wouldn’t claim on expenses?  Is there no point where they think they might be able to manage to buy something out of their own wages?

I merely ask because the loathsome James Purnell has been claiming £400 per month, roughly double what an unemployed 20-year-old gets a month with which to buy food, pay the utility bills, water and sewerage charge, clothe themselves and travel to and from job interviews.  he was trying to claim £475 per month but apparently that breaks the rules.  Thank God there are some rules otherwise the claims of these scrounging scumbags would run into billions”.

That jolly tune starts playing again…

“Oh, a slim little waist is a pleasure,

And a trim little limb is divine”

If your vice is not that of imbibing but ingesting, there is nowhere to hide, as the Government has its disapproving eye on you too.  Jonathan Calder of Liberal England asks a highly pertinent question in relation to the latest salvo in the war on obesity featuring two images of (slender) children with the kind of hard-hitting slogan hitherto reserved for encouraging smokers to stub out their habit, Government and food companies conspire to denigrate home cooking: “Personally, I find that cake pleasingly old fashioned.  White icing, with a cherry on top.  It’s the sort of cake children scheme to win in the Beano and the Dandy.

When we worry about what children eat these days, we do not worry about home baking.  We worry about things like crisps and fizzy drinks.

So why does this poster show a home-made cake?”

Costigan Quist of Himmelgarten Café follows suit in reacting unfavourably to the woefully misguided initiative in Kids told cupcakes and consoles as bad as smoking: “This whole campaign stinks.  I can understand concern about obesity and inaction, though I don’t think the evidence really supports it (for children at least).

But to be putting out this sort of scary, alarmist and downright nasty advertising you ought to have a damn good reason and they simply don’t.  The message is a lie.

The Government is spending millions of pounds stigmatising our young people.  They’re fat, lazy, unhealthy, anti-social and criminal.  I don’t believe that’s the intention of Labour ministers; but it’s the result”.

However, the most eloquently scathing condemnation comes from Suzi FemAcadem at The F-Word in Fat is the new Folk Devil: “(…) two advertisements from the Change 4 Life campaign, which were run in women’s magazines.  Both threaten the children in those adverts, with premature death, – one for eating a cupcake (girl) and one for playing computer games (boy).  Besides the obvious and irritatingly sexist assumption that only boys play computer games, and only women care about their children’s nutrition and physical activity levels, both adverts are threatening children with dying for doing two very normal childhood activities.

These adverts make me furious on many levels.  As a Mother, it is difficult enough, when my daughter comes home crying because someone at school told her she was fat and ugly (she’s actually ‘underweight’ and always has been.  My son regularly refuses to eat foods because he has been told at school that they are bad for him.

As a Gamer, I am annoyed that once again computer games are being blamed for children not doing more activity.  Just looking at my kids, and their friends, who all have access to at least one games console, not a [single] one of them engages in less than half an hour of physical activity.  We live on a council estate, in an area that is recognised as having health inequalities, and a level of comparatively high deprivation.  The reason those children have access to games consoles, is because their parents will save all year, scrimping on luxuries, walking instead of taking buses and so on, to get them a console as a big Christmas present.  Also, especially with the advent of the Wii and Balance Board-based games, which massively encourage physical activity, and it seems clear to me that once again the Government is falling back on time old and dangerous assumptions.

Finally, as a fat, but healthy woman, I’m annoyed.  This campaign against fatness, which for some of us, is out natural body shape, is infuriating, inaccurate and highly dangerous.  Parents need to be supported to make healthy lifestyle choices, with a focus on Health, not avoiding fat.  It should not be cheaper to go to Iceland and fill your freezer with frozen, processed foods than to be able to buy fresh vegetables and lean meats/fish to cook for your family.  Fat people should not have to suffer humiliation, and be accused of being a drain on resources, just because some idiot in a government department decided that fat was the danger of the day, despite an awful lot of evidence suggesting otherwise”.

What next?  If we exceed a certain weight are we to be issued with ration cards for chocolate and other treats?  Or is unemployment to be alleviated by installing food monitors at every checkout, helpfully unpacking from your carrier bag the items they deem to be extraneous, figure-expanding luxuries?  Or are we simply to be shamed by accusations of a culpable lack of solidarity (by gobbling up scarce NHS resources) in addition to the more traditional prejudices concerning our chronic lack of discipline and self-control, indolence and so on.  What amazes me is the assumption that we are oblivious to the presumed dangers to our health in the midst of a fat-loathing culture.  The Government should not be endeavouring to beat the diet companies at their own game in terms of exploiting our feelings of guilt and inadequacy.

Molly of Gaian Economics continues the moral sermon by exhorting us to pay greater attention to what we stuff into our mouths, advocating self-denial for the sake of the planet in A New Ethic of Consumption: “Let’s start with a cliché:you are what you eat.  I’ve been interested by the growing number of people who have food allergies and digestive problems. Of course some of this results from stress and no doubt post-modern, identity-related orthorexia has something to answer for too, but would it be too fanciful to suggest that we have treated our environment badly and it is now biting back?

Eating is the most direct way in which we come into relationship with our environment by literally consuming bits of it.  In this act we cannot deny our dependence on the natural world around us.  Some of my more consciously spiritual friends remember this by giving thanks to whatever they believe in rather than thoughtlessly tucking in”.

Peter Cranie (who refers to himself as “A Green MEP for the North West”, though surely this must be considered –in charitable mode – as a proclamation of ambition, as the only British Green MEPs in the European Parliament in its present – outgoing – composition are Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert) tackles the question of Donations and the Law, in essence an extended criticism of Liberal Democrat Councillor Steve Hurst: “Our democracy and the integrity of our political process is dependent on being able to trust that political parties will uphold the law, will not bend or break the rules on donations, and will not bring the results of previous elections into disrepute.

This is an absolutely key issue.  If a political party is not to be trusted on making a full declaration of their donations, then just how do we account for how that money is spent?”

Sarah Cope welcomes the reappearance in showrooms of G-Wiz electric cars, but laments their price tag putting them beyond the reach of all but the few, who content themselves with flaunting them as a trendy accessory rather than acquiring genuinely Green credentials through a more radical change in lifestyle in Gee…that’s NICE: “I do have a problem though with the city exec with the two private regged Range Rovers, tootling into the city in his/her G-Wiz but using his/her gas guzzlers at all other times.  ‘Look at me, I’m down with the kids,’ he/she seems to be saying.  ‘I am so Green it hurts.  Ouch’.

No mate, stop deluding yourself.  You probably have solar panels (because your neighbours can see them) but no loft insulation (because they can’t).  Why not take the tube into the city, or – whisper it – the bus?  Or would that mean mixing with the hoi polloi, and possibly catching/smelling something nasty?  Best to keep yourself cut off in your hermetically sealed (and oh-so-fashionable) bubble”.

Wendy Stayte at Transition Culture shows us the softer side of the environmental movement, providing An Update on Totnes Nut Tree Plantings.

In the dim and distant days before he metamorphosed into a clean-shaven Paw Broon, when he was a mere Chancellor of the Exchequer, our Beloved Prime Minister publicly pondered what it means to be British (British Council annual lecture, 7th July 2004): “What are the core values of Britishness?  Of course, a strong sense of national identity derives from the particular, the special things we cherish.  But it is my belief that out of tidal flows of British history – 2,000 years of successive waves of invasion, immigration, assimilation and trading partnerships that have created a uniquely rich and diverse culture – certain forces emerge again and again that make up a characteristically British set of values and qualities that, taken together, mean that there is indeed a strong and vibrant Britishness that underpins Britain”.

How might the essence of Britishness be put into words? According to Brown as follows: “(…) a passion for liberty anchored in a sense of duty and an intrinsic commitment to tolerance and fair play”.

He elaborates further: “And at every point this British belief in liberty has been matched by a British idea of duty as the virtue that reinforces neighbourliness and enshrines the idea of a public realm and public service.  A belief in the duty of one to another is an essential element of nationhood in every country.  But whether it arose from religious belief, from a noblesse oblige or from a sense of solidarity, duty in Britain has been, to most people, the foundation of rights rather than their consequence”.

And: “Britishness has also meant a tradition of fair play.  We may think today of British fair play as something applied on the sports field, but in fact most of the time it has been a very widely accepted foundation of social order: treating people fairly, rewarding hard work, encouraging self-improvement through education and being inclusive”.

Five years on his pronouncements hold a certain irony: “The two ideologies that have characterised the histories of other countries have never taken root here.  On the one hand an ideology of state power, which choked individual freedom and made the individual a slave to some arbitrarily defined collective interest, has found little or no favour in Britain.  On the other hand, an ideology of crude individualism, which leaves the individual isolated, stranded, on his own, detached from society around him, has no resonance for a Britain that has a strong sense of fair play and an even stronger sense of duty and a rich tradition of voluntary organisations, local democracy and civic life”.

In asking What binds Brits together? former Islamist Ed Husain voices unease about the ability of the concept of Britishness to promote cohesion between diverse ethnic groups:  “Let’s cut to the chase: we have a problem with connected identity here in Britain.  It’s not just Muslims such as [Muhammad Siddique] Khan who feel disconnected from Britain – the problems of atomised, self-centred existence are widespread.  The ‘nothing-to-do-with-me-guv’ mindset has caused us damage.  It has made us unwilling to find common ground with our fellow citizens.

British bashfulness also prevents us from talking about ourselves.  ‘Mustn’t grumble’ stops us from complaining about our identity malaise.  An aversion to ideas and anything remotely intellectual – unlike the eager French – blocks any discussion of shared values, or common ideas that glue us together.  But for how much longer?  I believe that this lack of a vigorous debate is damaging Britain”.

What it boils down to is whether integration and assimilation are desirable goals for minority communities subsumed within wider society: “But can a secular, liberal democracy in 2009 sustain values-based challenges from faith communities?  Time will tell, but a national conversation is overdue.  Without fear of racism or Islamophobia, it is time to ask the difficult questions.  Can religiously observant Muslims really integrate into Britain?  And should they?  How can a nation that has pubs as its shared space, ever truly welcome non-drinkers?  How do ordinary Brits really feel about those who prefer orange juice to beer?  And how can religious, marital monogamists raise children in a sexually liberal society that values individual choice over collective obligations?

And what about the loud minority within the Muslim community who oppose a secular state, and want to rule ‘for God’ and who wish to impose their reading of sharia law?  Is democracy a compromise with hakimiyyah, their version of ‘God’s rule’?

We need to move beyond simplistic debates about identity and engage with the deeper issues that are at stake.  Too often, commentators have suggested that a united society can be built on shared tastes in sport, food, and clothing.  This is not enough: such arguments overlook that the 7/7 bombers played cricket, ate fish and chips and dressed in jeans.  We need a deeper debate about the core values that can bind us together as a nation”.

His Quilliam Foundation is organising a seminar, What do Britons have in common?  Its publicity blurb is telling: “Why does Britain face a difficult challenge around integration today?  Is it because, as some claim, we have too many immigrants?  Or because of Britain’s liberal sexual mores that seemingly contradict religious teachings?  Or is it because our shared national space – pubs – appear inaccessible to some?  Or are democracy and the secular state unacceptable to some?  Or do Asian forced and arranged marriages abroad create generational tensions here in Britain?”.

The ascendancy of secularism and the concomitant loosening of the baleful grip of religion to my mind constitute the greatest achievements of Western civilisation, bringing many other benefits in their wake, including the unfinished project of full equality for women.  As such, they are non-negotiable.  Instead, I would re-frame the debate to focus on the limits of tolerance.

As a fully recovered ex-fundamentalist myself, I am more than aware of the blend of condescension and pity verging on outright contempt (although as Christians we never admitted the latter to ourselves, too piously concerned about the welfare of the eternal souls of the unconverted).  It is when the segregation of the mind is accompanied by social segregation (not by definition unilaterally imposed from the outside) that fanaticism enjoys free rein.  Religious conviction should not be allowed to take precedence over law within a parallel society.  This is where multicultural “tolerance” degenerates into a form of racism (”their” own laws are good enough for “them”, a charter for exclusion, oppression and the perpetrating of abuses, such as honour killings and female genital mutilation, outlawed practices that would never gain acceptance in the community at large).

In spite of being a happily married monogamist, I would never – “live and let live” neatly and succinctly captures the British outlook – seek to force my choice on anyone else much less look down on them for rejecting it.  Sexual permissiveness is always the first evil denounced by the religiously inclined, but I have no desire to see the clock turned back to the manifold miseries of the 19th century where the obstacles to divorce left women trapped in tyrannical relationships with no hope of escape.  The comments about teetotallers are arrant nonsense.  I have never frequented pubs and only drink a glass of wine with a meal in a restaurant in the company of friends yet this does not undermine my sense of belonging.  Mr Husain is oblivious to the history of the Temperance Movement.  The moral panic about women drinking to excess is very recent.  When I was growing up, pubs were completely male-dominated, women only allowed to venture into the Lounge Bars (and even then they were suspected of “loose” morals), but nobody ever doubted that women were part of the nation.

The unfailingly perspicacious Heresiarch of Heresy Corner detects similarities between the two interpretations, which he cogently sets out in His master’s voice: “The concept of Britishness, currently much in vogue, would seem to have two principal aims.  Firstly, to do something about the Muslim ‘problem’; secondly, to give Gordon Brown a point of contact with people in England”.

Khan and his disaffected spiritual brethren surely cannot be portrayed as typical young British Muslims: “It strikes me as ridiculous to frame citizenship programmes around the needs of such an unrepresentative group of disturbed individuals.  All that the state should require of its citizens is that they pay their taxes and obey the law.  beyond that we are in the realms of propaganda and indoctrination, neither of which strikes me as being particularly ‘British’ – any more than Brown’s recently-announced plans to inculcate a sense of national identity by using British teenagers as a source of unpaid labour.  Britishness as something defined by and imposed by the state is – apart from anything else – profoundly un-British, an irony the prime minister seems incapable of understanding.

Nations are brought together by shared stories, by a national spirit, by indefinable eccentricities.  With a government unable, or unwilling, to celebrate our shared national story – which used to concentrate on such things as the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Henry VIII’s wives and the Victorians’ conquest of much of the known world – what is left is nothing but a series of empty platitudes, a statement of ‘values’ that say nothing whatever about being ‘British’ as opposed to being French or Taiwanese.  Or there is an appeal to such things as freedom of speech, the British constitution, parliamentary democracy, the rule of law and other parts of our national inheritance that have been systematically undermined and betrayed by new Labour”.

The Heresiarch lists a few of the cultural archetypes that inform our sense of self: “It is not ‘values’ that define Britishness but particular things – fish and chips, thatched cottages, red postboxes, roads that become impassable every time it snows, the Grand National.  And these things change over time.  Curry houses are now as ‘British’ as old-fashioned pub signs, not because of officially sponsored programmes of multiculturalism, but because they have been naturally absorbed into the landscape and into the national psyche.  And it wasn’t some national characteristic of tolerance and cultural pluralism that made for the spread of Indian restaurants; it was because people wanted to eat the food they provided.

A national culture is organic and unpredictable.  Attempts to impose it from the centre usually fail, or produce ugly results”.

Solidarity and belonging cannot be conjured up to order (or upon orders): “The current Brown-directed garbage about citizenship elides two very different things: an individual’s relationship towards other people, whether in their local neighbourhood or at national (and indeed international) level, and the individual’s relationship with the state.  ‘Citizenship’ is both a legal concept, based on entitlement to a passport and the vote, and a moral concept, based on living in a society.  The same word may be used for both; but that does not mean that they must be or even ought to be confused.  To combine them, as the present British government is trying to do, in an artificial ‘Britishness’, is to assert the state’s sovereignty over both individuals and social groups, even to nationalise personal identity.  I suppose that’s the idea.  hence the paraphernalia of ID cards, lessons in ‘values’, ‘citizenship ceremonies’ (at the moment just for immigrants), repeated consultation exercises, a putative ‘national day’ and the new proposal for ‘compulsory volunteering’”.

The Heresiarch wonders what precisely Husain is driving at: “If all Ed Husain is saying is that all children, including those from Muslim backgrounds, should be taught that they live in a secular state and that they have a duty to obey the law, then I agree with him.  He appears to be saying something far more ambitious, however.  He claims (absurdly) that we are currently facing ‘the strongest challenge to Britain’s value system since the civil war’; his solution, it seems, is that a new notion of national identity ought to be constructed, which everyone of whatever background should have a duty to adopt.  Such ideas are illiberal and, coming from someone who write a bestselling book describing his longtime association with Islamic radicals, presumptuous in the extreme.  He appears not to understand British culture or national character at all.  But then again, I suspect he’s really just doing his paymaster’s bidding”.

With details of the postmortem result emerging (abdominal haemorrhage as the likely cause of death as opposed to a heart attack), The British Citizen protests that the press has its priorities all wrong in Police violence and Tomlinson death more important than silly emails.

However, in what mainstream media-employed journalists would no doubt gloat over as proof of the self-obsessed nature of blogging (thereby conveniently glossing over the sheer quantity of column inches they themselves have devoted to the issue), the ongoing saga linked to the leak of the electronic missives dubbed “Smeargate” has attracted greater attention amongst nominators this week.

Blogging

In a speech on Public Life delivered in Canary Wharf in June 2007, Tony Blair (not a politician from whom I can be accused of quoting very often) presented his thoughts on the implications of technological developments on the media (which opened up an ever-expanding niche for bloggers) and the latter’s relationship with politics: “The media world – like everything else – is becoming more fragmented, more diverse and transformed by technology.  The main BBC and ITN bulletins used to have audiences of 8, even 10 million.  Today the average is half that.  At the same time, there are rolling 24 hour news programmes that cover events as they unfold.  In 1982, there were 3 TV stations broadcasting in the UK.  Today there are hundreds.  In 1995 225 TV shows had audiences of over 15 million.  Today it is almost none.

Newspapers fight for a share of a shrinking market.  Many are now read on-line, not the next day.  Internet advertising has overtaken newspaper ads.  There are roughly 70 million blogs in existence, with around 120,000 being created every day.  In particular, young people will, less and less, get their news from traditional outlets.

But, in addition, the forms of communication are merging and interchanging.  The BBC website is crucial to the modern BBC.  papers have Podcasts and written material on the web.  News is becoming increasingly a free good, provided online without charge.  Realistically, these trends won’t do anything other than intensify.

These changes are obvious.  But less obvious is their effect.  The news schedule is now 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It moves in real time.  Papers don’t give you up to date news.  That’s already out there.  They have to break stories, try to lead the schedules.  Or they give a commentary.  And it all happens with outstanding speed”.

In the wake of Smeargate some of these contentions seem to have been borne out: “The reality is that as a result of the changing context in which 21st Century communications operates, the media are facing a hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before.  They are not the masters of this change but its victims.

The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by ‘impact’.  Impact is what matters.  It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed.  Impact gives competitive edge.  Of course the accuracy of a story counts.  But it is secondary to impact.

It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.

Broadsheets today face the same pressures as tabloids; broadcasters increasingly the same pressures as broadsheets.  The audience needs to be arrested, held and their emotions engaged.  Something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked.

The consequences of this are acute.

First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down.  news is rarely news unless it generates heat as much or more than light.

Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgement.  It is not enough for someone to make an error.  It has to be venal.  Conspiratorial (…)

What creates cynicism is not mistakes; it is allegations of misconduct.  But misconduct is what has impact.

Third, the fear of missing out means today’s media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack.  In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits.  But no-one dares miss out.

Fourth, rather than just report news, even if sensational or controversial, the new technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the news itself.  So – for example – there will be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying as there is coverage of them actually saying it.  In the interpretation, what matters is not what they mean; but what they could be taken to mean.  This leads to the incredibly frustrating pastime of expending a large amount of energy rebutting claims about the significance of things said, that bears little or no relation to what was intended.

In turn, this leads to a fifth point: the confusion of news and commentary.  Comment is a perfectly respectable part of journalism.  But it is supposed to be separate.  Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible.  The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course.  In other words, this is not exceptional.  It is routine”.

Even in a relatively measures speech such as this, Mr Blair could not resist the inevitable swipe: “New forms of communication would provide new outlets to by-pass the increasingly shrill tenor of the traditional media.  In fact, the new forms can be even more pernicious, less balanced, more intent on the latest conspiracy theory multiplied by five”.

Blogging has not rendered the printed press entirely obsolete, however: “It is sometimes said that the media is accountable daily through the choice of readers and viewers.  That is true up to a point.  But the reality is that the viewers or readers have no objective yardstick to measure what they are being told.  In every other walk of life in our society that exercises power, there are external forms of accountability, not least through the media itself.  So it is true politicians are accountable through the ballot box every few years.  But they are also profoundly accountable, daily, through the media, which is why a free press is so important”.

Not long ago journalist Nick Cohen waded into the debate with the question Who would you rather trust – the BBC or a blogger? (slightly lopsidedly pitting the true Goliath of news coverage against the rather puny David of the one-person blogging operation characteristic of most output): “[Clay Shirky] quotes the example of Alisara Chirapongse, a marvellous Thai student who blogged mainly about fashion.  Her readership was tiny, until the 2006 Thai military coup.  Chirapongse ignored a news blackout and described life in Bangkok.  She posted photos of mutinous troops on her website and organised a campaign against the army’s attempts at censorship.  When the crisis was over, international admirers left and she went back to sharing thoughts with her friends.

Newspaper correspondents in Thailand may have been censored by the military.  If their editors had sent them from London, they may not have known the language or understood Thai politics.  It is possible that Alisara’s writing was not only equal to the work of her professional rivals but superior and more widely read.

Why, then, mourn the passing of the hack?  The best reason for wanting my colleagues to survive is that serious reporters and broadcasters offer a guarantee that what they say is true.  If they stray, their editors impose journalistic standards and insist on objectivity.  They may not have the best or fullest story or the most vivid account, but readers should be able to assume their work is reliable, while a blogger’s commitment to objectivity can never be assumed”.

All too often, such a lofty depiction of your average journalist’s work is inaccurate to the point of travesty, as we shall explore later.

Gaby Hinsliffe in Guido Fawkes: Fast, furious,buccaneering…and now claiming their first major scalp bemoans the sheer nastiness of “the bitterly personal and vindictive world of the blogosphere”, adding: “Political blogs are a mix of the courtly (they acknowledge a story taken from another blogger by crediting the source with a ‘hat tip’, for example) and the toxic, with bitter feuds regularly erupting between players.  Both tactics actually help boost readership, by encouraging casual surfers to hop between sites or raising the profile of both sites in a spat”.

Briefings, lunches, consorting with the powerful and the implicit flattery of being invited have been the preserve of the fortunate and favoured few, who could congratulate themselves on having made it.  At some stage the unwavering pursuit of the truth no doubt slipped down the list of priorities compared to wining and dining, or mixing in the right circles for the elite.  Bloggers by contrast are not pampered and privileged in this way and our dedication to the truth (at least as we perceive it) has never faltered.  By trespassing on the territory of the “professional” journalist, Guido’s scoop represents a milestone.

Nick Anstead, occasional contributor to Slugger O’Toole and lecturer in politics, sets out his assessment of the significance of the episode in Media in the digital era: “While not structurally revolutionary in itself, I would however contest this kind of event is more and more likely to happen.  the mass media elite was defined by narrow inputs (produced by a small number among an information elite – journalists and publishers, for example).  It was because there were few of them that the role of the modern spin doctor developed in the first place.  A dialogue could occur among a narrow group of people and information could be managed.

Now though, we live in the digital era and have moved to a time of broad (and growing) inputs – in short, information cannot be managed in the same way by spin doctors when publishing is so easy.  Secrets are far harder to keep.  Look at wikileaks for just one example.  This means a fundamental readjustment in the way parties and governments handle information, and the ending of the nineties consensus on how politics is done”.

In Drapergate: Labour falls into a banal pit of despond…, Mick Fealty of the excellent Slugger O’Toole furnishes us with a very useful (though not exhaustive) review of articles and opinions, setting out what he regards as one of the important messages to be distilled from the furore: “One is that if you are going to get into the business of smearing your opponents (and I would strongly advise against it), make them plausibly deniable.  Guido has traded in smears of his political opponents from the start, some of it very personal and involving family members of the intended Labour party victim.  But, so far as we know, he is not on the Conservative party payroll!

But, as I argued on Brassneck in February, Draper was wrong headed in his handling of his blog Labour List…He and his party have paid a high price for the banal nihilism card of getting your opponents, no matter what…”

Indeed.

Not that the blogosphere and mainstream media are locked into mortal combat by some ineluctable law of nature.  As Slugger O’Toole demonstrates, when freedom of speech is under threat, they can fruitfully come to one another’s assistance.  Slugger landed an exclusive (as finally acknowledged in The Irish Times) when a rather nasty letter was passed on, prompting the question A legitimate complaint, or case of bullying from the top?

Jim Jay of The Daily (Maybe) also analyses the deeper significance of Smeargate in There are lessons for every party in the McBride scandal, more particularly the tendency to stifle any manifestation of criticism or dissent (which even the most cursory glance at the history of Central Europe will reveal is a Socialist speciality): “It amounts to an unaccountable clique at the heart of the party, and in this case the government.  Any criticism of Draper’s extremely problematic LabourList, for example, was seen as disloyalty to the party.  Even senior cabinet members were unable to curb these rogue elements because they had backing at the highest level.  This isn’t just a problem that the Labour Party faces, it is a potential problem for every political organisation (and non-political ones too probably).

Party members who have criticisms to make of party initiatives, departments or members are not just inconveniences but an important corrective that can help improve party performance.  Without the ability of members to at least have a say over the direction of the party they are a member of, and that includes publicly voicing concerns, that party cannot make any claim to democracy – and certainly will be sabotaging its own ability to retain experienced members.

That does not mean that all criticism is appropriate or, heaven forbid, correct but its existence is not an affront to anyone but control freaks and psychopaths.  But alas there are plenty of those in every party.  Those people wrongly see every suggestion that things could be done differently as evidence of an enemy within who want to tear down everything their party has achieved”.

In passing, Rachel Sylvester in Brown’s loyal attack dogs always bite to order elaborates on the nature of the Prime Minister’s inner circle: “There is a laddish and bullying atmosphere to the cabal of advisers and MPs surrounding Mr Brown.  Small talk revolves around football.  Briefings take place in pubs and karaoke bars.  The alleged coup against Tony Blair was planned over balti and beers.  It is not surprising that Mr McBride begins his e-mail with the word ‘Gents’ – the underlying misogyny of the rumours he was trying to spread is one of the most shocking aspects of the whole thing.  ‘Gordon is from Mars and more than half the voters are from Venus,’ one female minister says”.

Charles Crawford in Blogging Remora Fish: A Lack of Semiotic Subtlety? quotes from Wrinkled Weasel on the issue of blogging as a propaganda tool: “The real life parallel of blogging is a bar room rant, not an exchange of letters on Basildon Bond notepaper…

…If there is anything that could be described as ‘discourse’ in the blog world, it moves very quickly and is non-linear, which is why a lot of it becomes reduced to swear bloggery and ranting, since you do not have the time and reflection to agree on the meanings of terms, and ‘arsehole’ or ‘jerk’ tends to sum things up nicely”.

Blogging involves the gradual building of a constituency.  Summoning up an instant audience flash mob-style according to the Draper/McBride recipe was doomed to failure.

Charles ends his piece with a wonderfully witty comparison: “Finally, bloggers love to bang on about the iniquities and incompetence of the mainstream media, whose journalists in turn uneasily bang on about the soaring irresponsibility and trivialisation brought about by blogging.

To use another biological metaphor, are the MSM a group of elderly and lazy sharks, while bloggers are the Remora fish who swim around their jaws and backends picking up decaying morsels for the benefit of both species?”

In a comment on Janet Daley’s rather sour A star blogger admits that the blogosphere has not yet come of age, Oldrightie forcefully conveys why bloggers have a reputation for trustworthiness surpassing that of their highly remunerated counterparts: “The blogosphere, Madame, is a place to vent one’s spleen whilst the MSM chase advertising and power.  The self-interest and financial ambition of career journalism rarely taps the psyche of a public now very disillusioned by the media.  In particular the shameful BBC bias and the power crazed manipulation of people such as by Rupert Murdoch.  To gain way in journalism often requires the kind of subjugation as demanded by brown of his cohorts.  Honesty is never an issue, just egotism and hubris.  I’m afraid few journalists achieve accuracy or honesty in their commentaries and remain successful”.

Trixy, of Is there more to life than shoes? reminds us of the positive aspects of enhanced ease of access to information in Things to be thankful for: “The not-so-whispered concerns among hacks is that how did Guido get the mails before they did?  Why was he the first port of call?  Sunday papers in particular need those big scoops brought about when someone calls them with a scandal, or a video or some e-mails.  They pay thousands of pounds for them knowing that it will draw in the punters to buy their weekly rag.  It’s their life blood.

And now some upstart blogger who hasn’t done a graduate trainee scheme or worked on a regional paper has been running rings around not only the seemingly terminally foolish Dolly Draper and the political editors of the nationals but magnificently called the bluff of these spin doctors.

I can see why they’re concerned, but the running of this country and the actions of the people who do it is too important for the information not to be published.  How dare people being paid from the public purse spend their time thinking up such deceptions?  How low must one sink to try to divert democracy in such a way by seeking to alter the view voters have of an opposition party with such lies?

The internet has many pitfalls, but the quick, cheap dissemination of important information is one of the reasons we should revel in our new found power over people who seek to control the information we have access to.

If economics flourishes with information, then politics – an industry where the abuse of power can dominate opinions, actions and pay cheques, will surely benefit as people realise that they aren’t safe from the voter finding out.

And with the internet and blogs in particular, those who stand to lose the most can’t lunch or bully everyone”.

Bloggers do not pose a real threat to the livelihood of journalists attached to the major papers (even with their diminishing circulations we still cannot really compete with their entrenched position in the national psyche as authoritative and reliable sources of information, nor can we remotely command anything like the resources at their disposal).  A few, such as Guido, might make inroads into their celebrity, the rest of us diligently plugging away in obscurity (I am not complaining, I prefer not to have every minute detail of my life held up for inspection).  What irks me about the attitude of many journalists is that, instead of welcoming the broadening of opinion, and taking it as inspiration to improve their own writing to stay ahead, they fear it as a challenge to their authority.  Like mice at a banquet, all we can do is gnaw at the hem of the tablecloth yet even this appears to be more than many can stomach.  Yes, we bloggers are so bold as to deconstruct slovenly writing and to dish out criticism where it is deserved.  “Keep Out” signs will not deter us.  Journalists have to wake up to the fact that deference is not automatic, and respect has to be earned.

Returning to the lofty pronouncements of moral superiority and professional integrity on the part of our haughty detractors, I submit for your consideration two case studies.  First up is Bill Carmichael in the Yorkshire Post on Brutal truths about protest: “The female protester allegedly assaulted by a police officer during the G20 protests is said to be ‘traumatised’ by the incident.

Poor love!  She sounds like a delicate flower, doesn’t she?  Strolling alone minding her own business in the City of London when suddenly she was struck down by the jackboot of the fascist police state.

Er…well, perhaps not.  The marvellous thing about all this video footage that is swilling about on the internet is that truth cuts both ways – and often it dispels the myths on both sides.

Take a few moments to look at the video and a strikingly different picture emerges from the propaganda being put out by the protestors and their friends at the BBC and left-wing newspapers.

Instead of the sanitised version of injured innocence, what you’ll see is an aggressive-looking young woman – as yet unidentified –hat pulled down over her eyes, mouthing obscenities into the face of a police officer, who is trying to ignore her.

After several minutes of this he snaps and slaps her with the back of his hand with the words :’Go away’.

She doesn’t and she continues to hurl abuse.  At which point he draws his baton and belts her on the legs.

If anyone ever deserved a good slap, this woman certainly did.

Instead of being suspended and investigated, I believe the officer involved should be commended for his forbearance”.

It is entirely inappropriate and completely reprehensible for a supposedly reputable publication to condone the physical chastisement of women for defying male authority.  Perhaps the activist transgressed Mr Carmichael’s notions of demure, simpering femininity by spouting foul language, who knows, no doubt his remedy would be to resuscitate the laws against the pestilential scourge of uppity women, of communis rixatrix, bring back the scold’s bridle!

Harpymarx shares my disgust at his views, which she summarises thus: “(…) state thuggery and violence against women is totally acceptable as this woman got what she deserved.  Is his next column going to argue for the return of the ‘rule of thumb’ against lippy women who step out of line?”

She pours justified scorn on Carmichael: “Let’s not contend ourselves with the boring details about this TSG cop not wearing his number let’s distract ourselves with the details of the woman who had her hat pulled down over her eyes.  Shocking!  And could she have done that because…it was a sunny day…(Oh, hiow prosaic!).

She remonstrated with the cop, if you look at the video on youtube, the cops decided a couple of mins. previously to grab a man for no reason that is what she and others were responding to.  I witnessed them grab this man for no reason and that caused people to remonstrate…I saw the TSG cop grab another woman seconds before, he was intent on punching her as well!  Carmichael would undoubtedly believe she deserved a beating too!!!”

Secondly, Uponnothing of Angry Mob picks apart the reporting of a tragic accident in Newspapers lie about the death of Georgina Williams, showing how biases lead to the wilful distortion of facts: “The Daily Mail reveals once again its obsession with class, it feels necessary to say she attended a ‘top grammar school’ which is then clearly juxtaposed with the ‘nearby comprehensive’ – so the Daily Mail clearly picks a side in the opening paragraph as well as the headline.  Further unnecessary details include the value of the home in which she was found dead, again cementing the idea that a respectable upper-middle-class girl has been hounded to death by feral comprehensive children.

However, the interesting details are that there are ‘fears she was bullied’ by comprehensive students, the inquest and father of Georgina Williams had concluded that any fears were not founded, and in fact that no ‘row’ had actually taken place.  So where is the Mail getting its evidence from?  Their source is the reliable and neutral news source: Bebo” (going back to Nick Cohen’s piece, not only are the dailies failing to dispatch correspondents to Thailand, but even the wild, conflict-riven wastelands of Kent would seem to be too remote and expensive!).

As Uponnothing concludes: “The Daily Mail is therefore able to trump fact with unsubstantiated rumours posted by children in the period of time following the death of a fellow student.  The Daily Mail are not reporting news, they are indulging in scaremongering gossip dressed up as investigative journalism – as if digging around  Bebo page could provide answers that the inquest could not”.

The credibility that blogs possess by virtue of articulating the authentic opinions of the author has been recognised by those who would dearly love to hawk their wares and have no scruples about how they go about it, as discovered by Gordon McLean of One Man Blogs in Evil Pharma: “After some investigation it turns out the entire blog is fake, in fact it isn’t a blog at all, it’s a single page with faked comments, which inserts a ‘recent’ date at the top of the page and uses a script to match the IP of the visitor (you) to make it look like it’s being written by someone in the same local area”.

Thankfully, we bloggers are not as under-endowed with intelligence as the advertisers would like to think, as Gordon makes clear: “(…) you cannot simply con your way to having a good ‘online presence’, that blogs take work and effort, care and attention, and that,ultimately if you cock something up or try to con us we WILL find out”.

To close on all matters Internet, Letters from a Tory mulls over whether Twitter and Facebook may damage our sense of morality: “The speed at which we now receive a breathtaking volume of information every hour of every day is something that should be both praised and damned in some respects.  As an adult who was brought up on the crest of the digital wave, I don’t think Facebook or Twitter or anything of the same ilk represents a threat to my morality or ethics.  However, the prospect of someone developing and maturing in a world where instant reactions are the rule rather than the exception raises some interesting questions, particularly for parenting.  No doubt some idiots along the way will call for digital media outlets to be banned or curbed but it is impossible to fight the tide”.

Feminism

Laurie Penny of Penny Red argues that feminism’s emancipatory agenda is not confined to the liberation of the female sex in Men, feminism and the patriarchal con: “There are many urgent reasons why socialist feminists of all genders need to concern themselves with popular misandry and the subjugation of men, especially when we’re facing down the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.  A recession is never a good time for women’s rights:economic crisis moves economic equality from the agenda, and a great deal of women’s struggle in and out of the workplace revolves around the battle for equal economic status.  Cuts to welfare benefits and part-time employment hit women with children hardest.  But most importantly of all, recession creates a large body of justly angry, disenfranchised working men, men who are encouraged implicitly and sometimes explicitly to take that anger out where it will do least damage to capitalist hegemony: to wit, on women.  It is a well-known and oft-repeated fact that domestic violence against women increases in times of economic crisis, usually, as is the case now, contiguously with a cut in state spending on women’s refuges.  But another backlash against feminism itself is also to be expected – and as feminists, the fallacy that the problems that men face in a recession are the fault of feminism is something that we need to turn and face”.

As if to substantiate her argument, Lynne Miles at The F-Word informs us Council strikes blow for gender equality, cuts women’s pay by 25%: “Sheffield City Council has announced a salary restructuring as a result of the onerous duty of gender equality legislation.  Apparently the unreasonable burden of having to pay the workers equally for doing similar jobs has caused them a great deal of trouble.  When they looked into it they found – as so many do – that they weren’t.  Solution?  Cut the pay of your lowest worker, blame the lefties who made you do it”.

Culture

Natalie Bennett of Philobiblon reviews Melissa Franklin Harkrider’s Women, Reform and Community in Early Modern England: Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and Lincolnshire’s Godly Aristocracy, 1519-1580 in How to really annoy David Starkey, a tongue-in-cheek title, which she explains for the benefit of those not familiar with the historian’s prejudices: “Women, in Starkey’s world, had no significance in the 16th century, and writing a biography of a woman, even one who was high ranking, with access to royalty, would be a pointless exercise. Read this slim monograph, however, and you’ll realise just how silly this stance is”.

Whilst Susanne Lamido of Suz Blog samples some slightly less rarefied pleasures in Britain’s Got Talent Susan Boyle Sings Les Misérables.

If there was ever a feature of Englishness remarked upon by outsiders, then surely it is the proliferation of eccentric customs, such as gurning, Cheese-Rolling or the Hallaton Bottle-Kicking faithfully catalogued by Peter Ashton at Unmitigated England.  No quaint, sedate rituals these.  Their boisterousness and risk to life and limb in sharp contrast to the cotton-wool cosseted, drab government-approved entertainments of more recent vintage.  Long may they flourish!

Miscellaneous

The Heresiarch contemplates the divine on the basis of research carried out by Professor Uffe Schøjdt into how believers apprehend God by scanning their brains during prayer in What a friend they have in Jesus: “What Schøjdt’s brain imaging reveals, then, is something that we really know all along: that when it comes to worshipping, or praying to, or putting trust in, ‘God’ most people (even, I suspect, some of the sophisticated theologians) are not relating to the Supreme Being, or to the Ground of Universal Transcendence, or some such abstraction or spiritual essence, but to something much closer to the human scale.  Perhaps language, with its talk of heavenly fathers and ‘the word of God’, pushes them in this direction.  But I suspect that religion, as a way of making sense of the world, had its origins in anthropomorphic ways of thought that seem to come quite naturally to human beings.  Evolved to relate to other individuals with minds, people tend to relate to inanimate objects and even the universe itself as beings possessed of intelligence.  In the days before science, people conceptualised forces at work in the natural world as reflecting the activities of beings with intentions, or as beings themselves.  Even today we tend to (half-jokingly, perhaps, and in full knowledge of its futility) feel anger towards a car that won’t start.  And we are constantly exhorted to feel a sense of responsibility towards ‘Gaia’”.

Cabalamat of Amused Cynicism expounds why Blair’s Faith Foundation is full of shit: “So Blair wants us all to respect other religions, or ‘faiths’ to use the namby-pamby ecumenical mot du jour.  But hang on, isn’t Tony Blair a Roman Catholic?  And don’t Catholics believe that if you’re not a Catholic (or at any rate not a Christian) you’ll be tortured in Hell after you die?  That being the case, surely Catholics shouldn’t ‘respect’ other religions at all, but should regard them as deadly serious errors?

For example, if Blair saw a friend about to drink weedkiller, mistakenly believing it was blackcurrant juice, he would say ‘No!  Stop!  Don’t do that!’  And so it should be with religion, if Blair is truly a believer in the Catholic faith: if he notices that one of his friends is a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu, and he really cares about his friend, he should say ‘Stop, friend!  Don’t do that!  You’re risking being tortured for eternity!’”

In a thoughtful piece, which perfectly encapsulates the virtues of the blog as a mature medium for informed comment, Margin at Pseuds’ Corner and Home of the Frustrated Hack recalls An earlier Hillsborough disaster, the Spurs versus Wolves match at the grounds in 1981, which has not left a scar on the collective consciousness: “And the reason for that is simple.

Unlike their counterparts in 1989, the police commanders in charge in 1981 were not in charge of their first match, were not ignorant and incompetent, and were seemingly not predisposed to assume all problems were the result of violent scum on the terraces who deserved everything they got.

Instead, those in charge acted sensibly on the feedback of officers on the frontline.  As a result they ordered the closure of the gates leading to the most crowded pens, and then directed incoming fans to safer areas.  They acted somewhat late, but they did act.  And many fans were helped out of the crowded spaces by fellow fans and police alike.  They then sat along the edge of the pitch to watch the game unfold”.

Craig Murray pays tribute to the late Clement Freud, one of his predecessors as Rector of the University of Dundee: “For the student charities’ campaign he produced The Rector’s Cookbook, a collection of recipes that could be cooked in one pan on a single gas ring – in those days a not unusual sole cooking facility for a Dundee student.

He did a promotional piece for STV in a student flat in Springfield, equipped with a fold-away gas ring that swung out from the wall.  Halfway through his cooking demonstration the cooking ring collapsed, the pan clashed to the floor, spraying everyone with chilli, and a jet of yellow flame shot across the room, setting fire to the bedclothes. Freud turned to the camera and said, in the slowest and most deadpan voice imaginable as the room blazed around him: ‘And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the perfect demonstration of the conditions which students have been reduced to under the Labour government’”.

Nest week’s Roundup will be hosted by Matt Wardman of The Wardman Wire.  For a full statement of editorial policy, the hosting rota and the complete archives of the Roundup, consult the Britblog Central website.

As ever, nominations should be sent to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com

[Background: on 20th November 2008, I received an unsolicited mail from Blogged.com generously awarding me a score of 7.4 out of 10 whilst informing me with all the gushing, upbeat insincerity of contemporary corporate rhetoric: "This is quite an achievement!"  The sender encouraged me to festoon my site with a promotional link proudly displaying my rating for the vast legions of bored males who according to Google Analytics spend less than one second on my site, just long enough to be disabused of the notion that my category XXL might have anything to do with simulations of writhing ecstasy, perhaps pausing for a Homer Simpson-like, forehead-slapping epiphany that the abbreviation quite innocently refers to clothing sizes.  No doubt expecting me to roll over like a poodle, tongue-lolling excitedly in transports of self-abasing gratitude that a little affection had been directed towards me.  How sadly mistaken.  A more appropriate canine comparison would involve that house at the end of the road in the sink estate, the one that even the local thugs give a wide berth, with the rickety wooden fence complete with scratch marks from vicious claws and an abandoned supermarket trolley lying helpless on its side on the lawn where the spike-collared Rottweiler roams.  One whiff of an impetuous intruder foolhardily approaching the beast's domain and it launches itself, teeth bared, battering its muscular bulk against the flimsy wood, salivating to part flesh and sinew from bone in its frenzied fury.  What follows is my reply.  Needless to say, I did not receive a response]

Dear Amy,

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to send me a standard format mail with a corresponding one-size-fits-all text.  No doubt the implied flattery of the phrase “This is quite an achievement!” is intended to elicit a Pavlovian response from the recipient to increase your site’s prestige (and position in search engine rankings) by pasting the link onto the sidebar as a badge of honour.

I, however, do not have the remotest intention of so doing and would like to explain why.

Firstly, I harbour serious suspicions that no human editor has so much as given the most cursory glance at my blog.  In part because I do not believe that you possess the financial and staffing resources necessary to substantiate your claim (albeit not expressly stated, but inherent in the nature of a site assigning scores to blogs) to function as some kind of arbiter of good writing.  In view of the sheer number of blogs (many of which are strewn over the pages of Blogger like so many archaeological remains, having been abandoned shortly after coming into being in the first instance either because the author’s attention span compares unfavourably with that of a thereby much-maligned amphibian or because they quickly succumb to the disillusionment that sets in when they are not instantly catapulted into the limelight or inundated with offers of book deals and the only attention bestowed upon them manifests itself in the inane and malevolent scribblings of trolls) it would require hordes of full-time employees to sift through and provide a genuine, considered assessment of each and every one of them.

Secondly, because of the score awarded to my blog.  All evaluation criteria are open to contestation, but some are more nebulous or likely to attract objections than others.  Let us examine each of the rating-determining criteria in turn.  The first is listed as “Frequency of Updates”.  This is founded on the assumption that a good blog is updated every day or perhaps more than once a day.  However, as the most superficial perusal of any teenager’s blog will suffice to demonstrate,  frequency of posting is usually in inverse proportion to quality.  Had an actual human judge proceeded to investigate my Profile Page, the logical place to begin when attempting to glean relevant information about the author or to acquaint oneself, however fleetingly, with the persona they wish to adopt, he or she would immediately have been appraised of my “mission statement”, or my stated purpose in writing: “Redemption Blues was conceived as an autobiography in fragments, but equally as a work in progress not easily reducible to any single (or simple) category.  My hope is that Redemption Blues will eventually attain the status of a ‘blog’ as opposed to a ‘good blog of the hour’ to adopt and adapt John Ruskin’s classification in Sesame and Lilies”.   The quotation from Ruskin which follows would have alerted them to the fact that the blog is not intended as some temporary or ephemeral venting exercise or disjointed series of huffings and puffings about the relentless flow of events, but as a literary/academic work including serious commentary and in-depth analysis.  True, the author’s initial perception of her output was as a “Personal Blog”, but the undertaking grew over time, expanding like a tree trunk, the rings invisible until exposed in cross-section.  This is where I part company with many, if not most, in my appreciation of the potential of the genre as a vehicle of thought and expression.  Its boundaries are not fixed, but fluid, it ought to be able to encompass “art” or at least aspire to, and it should not be regarded as inferior to what actually makes it into print in the bleak, commercially-driven imperative of the contemporary publishing industry.  Why should our views of what a blog should be like be conditioned by the lowest common denominator?  I am quite reconciled to the minute readership my blog commands as I quite deliberately refuse to pander to the tastes of the majority.  Given therefore that Redemption Blues strives for depth, the likelihood of the kind of feverish updating typical of blogs aimed at an average audience is not great to say the least.  Judging it according to criteria that quite self-evidently do not apply is an exercise in futility, if not downright dishonesty.

Then comes the enigmatic “Relevance of Content”, a classification, which begs more questions than it could ever hope to answer.  From whose standpoint?  Is a blog written from a staunchly British point of view to be deemed less relevant than a comparable American one simply because of US dominance of the Internet or because US politics and culture are considered more important by dint of the country’s economic clout and sheer weight of population numbers?  Surely this constitutes a parochial view, further sullied by a myopic and ugly nationalism.  Moreover, what meaning does the concept of “relevance” possess in relation to a “Personal Blog”?  By definition, the content posted on any blog is relevant to the author, otherwise they would not have bothered to write anything at all on the subject.  No external observer is entitled to adjudicate on the question of relevance.  Even if I were to attract a high volume of traffic because of an opinion voiced what is being measured is the interest others show in a topic (influenced by an entire array of factors).  Perhaps a blog that explicitly stakes a claim to being political might at a pinch be graded according to relevance of content in the sense that if the author strays from the narrow parameters defining what constitutes the properly political (a contested category in itself) to talk about the weather (unless the latter is related to anthropogenic climate change) it would not be beyond the bounds of imagination for an excessive and recurrent focus on the natural spectacle beyond the window pane to detract from the supposed “relevance” of the articles under scrutiny, but again exclusively in terms of the individual author’s own stated objectives.  It is, quite simply, nonsensical to try to impose a universally valid relevance criterion to any blog, which fatally discredits the rating system itself.

Next up is “Site Design”.  Blogging has been lauded as a more democratic and widely accessible form of articulating opinion.  Since the vast majority of bloggers are not computer experts/programmers/web designers it strikes me as highly questionable to include site design as a gauge of relative merit.  You really ought to be giving the points to Blogger or WordPress, but not using them as a means of distinguishing between individual bloggers, some of whom might be advanced enough to customise the standard template to add a personal touch.  In so doing, you end up penalising bloggers who might be extremely talented writers, but whose computer skills are more limited, privileging style over substance, slightly odd for a site that purports to direct readers towards quality content.  Then there is the matter of gender bias.  Supposing a female blogger wishes (and I am quite deliberately trading in crass stereotypes here for illustration purposes) to “prettify” her blog with cascades of flowers or a retina-scorching pink background, whereas a male blogger wishes to cultivate an air of “seriousness” and prefers a crisp, austere backdrop to his collected ruminations.  Which of these would yield a higher rating?  Increasing a score on the basis of “superior” site design not only depressingly replicates the kind of snap judgements ascribed to employers when ascertaining the suitability of job applicants (i.e. success or failure hinges almost entirely on superficialities, again surely not the kind of activity any organisation that craves to be taken seriously as a reliable guide to quality ought to be indulging in), but also  rewards those who can afford to pay small fortunes for web designers (in which case it would of course be the latter’s efforts which were being assessed) to impart a polished professional “look” – bringing us straight back to substance versus surface.  How amazingly progressive and enlightened of you.  How profoundly in touch with the spirit of blogging.

Finally, “Writing Style”.  In this context, I decided to check the rating your organisation considered appropriate for another personal blog with which I am familiar, Petite Anglaise.  It trounces Redemption Blues with 7.8 (as opposed to my 7.4).  In many respects, this is analogous to comparing an academic publication with a bodice-ripping bestseller, although both blogs are, it is true, subsumed beneath the same broad category.  You don’t have to take my word for it, simply type the respective URLs into the Blog Readability Test (a blunt instrument, yet instructive here) and you will discover that whilst Redemption Blues targets readers of a certain sophistication, as encapsulated in the “Genius Level” grading (itself an exaggeration betraying a sad decline in literacy levels), Petite Anglaise can be savoured by anyone of “High School” educational attainment.  I am at least somewhat relieved to note that pure readership figures (albeit blogs of stellar renown, such as Dooce.com have obtained remarkably high scores, suggesting that Technorati Authority might be an unacknowledged component of your evaluations after all) do not appear, at least not blatantly, to influence the results, otherwise Petite Anglaise would eclipse Redemption Blues entirely.  Taking raw popularity as an index of quality is extremely problematic.  Although inaccessibility/impenetrability do not betoken academic prowess (particularly to those acculturated into the theory-adverse, pragmatic Anglo-Saxon mindset), widespread appeal does not represent an incontestable guarantee of distinction.  Petite Anglaise does not pretend to be anything other than lightweight (except in the book version, where portentous mentions of posterity recur), profundity is entirely alien to it.  The judiciously edited account of the trials and tribulations of a secretary living in a location steeped in romantic associations in the minds of many of its readers was never going to aim higher than vacuous chick-lit, fit for consumption over a morning coffee, a throwaway piece of entertainment.  Redemption Blues, by contrast, is not hallmarked by either shallowness or pathological self-obsession.  In a nutshell, endorsing Petite Anglaise over Redemption Blues is equivalent to rejecting the Booker Prize shortlister in favour of the sun cream-spattered Mills and Boon beachside distraction.  Therefore it would be extremely difficult to persuade me that your entire rating system is anything other than a hollow, intellectually and morally bankrupt endeavour.

Returning to my initial protest about the total absence of human involvement in the rating process despite avowals to the contrary, the “Related topics” are simply strip-mined from my introductory paragraph and bear no relationship to the actual contents of my blog.  A more refined method of hoodwinking the hapless browser into deluding themselves that an actual person had so much as clicked once on the blog would have been to reproduce the author-devised categories.  This would have included Culture, Sociology and Women and Multiculturalism to name but three.  At least then any reader who might have strayed onto the relevant listing in the Directory might have been given a tantalising flavour of what my blog is about.  As things stand, potential visitors are comprehensively (and reprehensibly) misinformed (I cannot be blamed for this, as by compiling a Profile Page as well as a list of categories, I self-evidently expect curious passers-by to explore further).

I hope that these objections will serve as an inducement not to underestimate the intelligence of blog authors in future and to reflect on the wisdom of remorselessly promoting a hopelessly defective rating tool.  Perhaps they might even prompt you to ponder how best to salvage a semblance of the authority you clearly hanker after by improving it.

Yours faithfully,

The Chameleon

[Footnote for the hard of thinking, orchestrators of two-minute hate sessions, sundry members of Petite's army of (p)sychophants and wilful distorters.  Before hastening to conclude that my aversion to the prose of the Parisian stems from snobbery, spite, sour grapes, bruised vanity or whatever other motive you would seek to impute to me, please recall the vast power imbalance between us, which overshadows all else.  Remember before gallantly rushing to her defence by taking a swipe at me that she is the one who has been able to escape the drudgery of office dronedom with the half a million pound book deal whilst I continue to toil away in obscurity.  There is a certain subtle, self-deprecating (if not masochistic) irony contained in my words.  Like the high-pitched whine of the mosquito inaudible to the elephant it is about to divebomb in spite of the latter's magnificent ears.  The insect's doomed attempt to penetrate the hide so utterly ridiculous as to enter the realm of the farcical.  The mere fact of the inclusion of this piece under Chameleon Lite signals that it belongs to the more trivial postings with a tinge of humour.  Of course, it is quite dismal for me to feel obliged to point out what to a regular reader is insultingly obvious.  Detractors seldom bother with context before launching into invective however and I have already been shunned by the self-proclaimed "cream" of British blogging for the sin of blaspheming against Her Sublime Untouchableness.  I steadfastly refuse to back down from my assertion that marketability does not coincide with merit, a proposition Ms S very vividly illustrates]

Leaning on the draining board, tea towel for padding, yet your elbows still bruised, the newspaper strategically folded to reveal the crossword as the starlings perched along the empty washing line.  The drowsy hum of the bees at the Tummel mint, in the shade of the parasol planted in the border you watched his infant’s hand reach towards the drooping purple heads to withdraw at your warning.  A patchwork of tiny gestures, the wooden tongs transferring sodden cloth from one tub to another, Scottish breakfast every Sunday, trowel digging the weeds up by the roots and discarding them on the midden with the grass clippings.  The peal of the Academy bell through the open kitchen window, afternoon tea on your best china, sandwich slivers with cucumber for two giggling girls, dissecting the working day, patrolling the corridors, the trips to the library on board the double-decker, smokers upstairs, the shopping lists unworthy of such careful script, the smell of polish.

Yours was the gift of true humility, holding us together with the warmth of your smile, the Mars bar in the packed lunch box, watering the tomatoes in the greenhouse, Mr Blobby biscuits fresh from the bakery, gentle, embracing, welcomed without question, we could always return to you, no matter how bitter the disappointment, you accepted us without judgement, putting the kettle on, and when you could not follow us down the path, your hand waving in front of the lace curtain.

Welcome to the sustainable society edition of the Britblog Roundup brought to you from beneath the the permadrizzle shroud of the city of regulators and lobbyists.  Contributors have been in philosophical mode this week, pondering how best to preserve social cohesion and support a lifestyle that will not deprive future generations of a decent future, covering a wide variety of topics ranging from the devastating impact of chronic job insecurity, through the possible benefits of eugenics to putting on your wellies to emulate the admirable self-sufficiency of Tom and Barbara.

Politics

Andrew Ian Dodge of Dodgeblogium, in Dr Butler on the rot that is Britain today… rightly laments the bias shown by Auntie Beeb in choosing not to peer through her bifocals at a volume published by a think-tank that she disapproves of.  In his review of The Rotten State of Britain at Blogger News Network, he suggests why her bloomers might be in a twist: "The book sets out to detail all the various aspects of life that have worsened under Labour ranging from personal freedom through taxation to the most basic provisions of health in the NHS.  Dr Butler effectively prepares anyone who wishes to perforate the continued assertion that Britain is in its current state because of Conservative administration that ended over a decade ago".

TV and computers are always first in the firing line when it comes to hand-wringing about how we increasingly live in juxtaposition to each other rather than mingling in the outdoors.  However, the doom and gloom mongers of the media are keen to portray public space, where social interaction occurs, as dangerous.  This in turn fuels a pervasive paranoia manifested in the unblinking eyes of surveillance cameras and letting our children out of our sight for a fraction of a second, let alone permitting them to wander off to the playground unsupervised is regarded as the height of folly, an act of culpable neglect.

We retreat into the safety of our properties with a pang of sadness and loss. mourning the demise of the carefree days when we inhabited the outdoors free from a protective adult presence, roaming through the streets until hunger chivvied us homeward.  In our more nostalgic moments, we yearn for the warmth and closeness that appears to have evaporated when we are not cursing our litigious neighbours for suing us over the branches of the lilac brazenly trespassing over their fence.  Is community the product of boredom or deprivation?  As an ex-pat in self-imposed and relatively contented exile, I appreciate the irony of contemplating the issue.  My uprootedness, my existence outside the context of my birth and upbringing are precisely what I cherish, rendering me impossible to "read" (and be instantly appraised, beyond the status of "foreigner" that is).  The precondition of community must surely be the wish to belong, some bond of affection, some feeling of investment in and attachment to a place, all of which are absent for myself and many of my fellow inhabitants of the Eurobubble, surrounded by reluctant and resentful hosts.  Like many immigrants who cannot bear to admit to themselves that they are here to stay, wherever "here" may be, no matter how many years go by, I still think of my residence as transient.

Riversider at Broadgate is Great, drawing on Professor Robert Putnam’s initiative across the Pond, lists, in a creditable effort at transplanting it to British soil, 85 Ways to Build Community.  Predictably (though not without justification), "Turn off your TV or PC" features as admonition number one (on the original American list, top spot goes to "Organise a social gathering to welcome a new neighbour".  Switching off the goggle box is to converse with friends or family occupies 71st position only).  "Go outside" comes in at number two.  Interestingly, "Say hello to strangers" is number 51 (85 in the US version).  People still where I come from and it is part of the charm of the place, but nowadays chiefly the preserve of the older generation.  "Join in to help carry something heavy" would be a non-starter in Waffleland, where nobody would dream of giving up their seat for a white-haired matron on a bus, never mind a pregnant woman.

Continuing on the theme of community, David Cameron recently unveiled the Conservatives’ plans for devolution writ small in the party’s Green Paper on local government, setting out the logic behind the proposals: “Right now most people feel totally insignificant in the political process.  Frankly, that’s because – in the current over-centralised system – they are insignificant.  If you’re unhappy about decisions made by your local council there’s very little you can do about it outside election day.

We’re going to change that by giving people the power to instigate referendums on local issues – including council tax rises.  If there’s a local consensus that a tax increase is unnecessary, people will be able to club together and vote it down.  This isn’t the sham ‘power to the people’ of a one-day consultation or a citizens’ jury; it’s real power in the hands of local people”.

And: “Many worry that decentralisation is a step backwards.  But localism isn’t some romantic attachment to the past.  It is absolutely essential to our economic, social and political future.  If our local economies are vibrant and strong we are far less vulnerable to global shocks or the failures of a few dominant industries.  If people know that their actions can make a real difference to their local communities, they’re far more motivated to get involved – and civic pride is revived.  If local government is both more powerful and more accountable, we can start to restore the trust that’s been lost in our political system.  It’s for these reasons that I am a conformed localist, committed to turning Britain’s pyramid of power on its head”.

In Central truth of Tory localism, Jeremy Beecham endeavours to expose what lurks beneath the rhetoric: “The truth is that the effect of these proposals would be to undercut representative local democracy and diminish the appeal of service as a local councillor.  On the other hand they might, as Nick Boles candidly admitted a year or two ago, be the only way the Tories might exercise influence in much of urban Britain, which has long turned its back on them”.

For Beecham, the cloven hoof positively protrudes from beneath the hem of the gown: “And over local government finance a more than discreet veil is drawn.  No mention of the planned 1% cut in grant, nothing about making council tax fairer or revaluation 20 years after its introduction, nothing about reforming council tax benefit and nothing about relocalising business rates, beyond a modest revision of the government’s scheme for a business supplementary rate.

But then this is not too surprising, for behind Cameron’s warm words lies the reality of the Tory approach to local government, from Eric Pickles’ blustering instructions to Tory councils to the 100 ways to cut council tax promulgated by their flagship (or should that be destroyer?) council, Hammersmith and Fulham, including cutting the youth service, slashing support for the arts, sending children to boarding schools and emasculating scrutiny.  And isn’t it significant that when it comes to referendums on council tax there’s no option to increase it?  The only direction is down”.

Matt Sellwood of Anglo-Buddhist Combine devotes a post to responding to a comment by Paul Kingsnorth to the effect that "The population of the UK is currently 60 million.  At current rates of change it will be over 70 million within a couple of decades.  That’s largely an issue of immigration.  Something can be done about that.  If it isn’t done – because we don’t want to talk about immigration in case we are called racist, etc. etc. – then we are faced with having to provide power for an extra 10 million people.  Any plans for how to make that work in a ‘green’ way?"

In a thoughtful and more detailed earlier post on his own blog, Immigration: truisms vs. clichés, Kingsnorth highlights the perniciousness of stifling debate: "On immigration itself, whatever your view on the matter it is hard to deny that the way it has been handled over the last decade has been deeply undemocratic.  The number of people expressing concern about immigration has shot up in the last decade; coinciding with the largest rise in immigration in British history.  Call them racists if you like (though it would be lazy, and wrong), but if you call yourself a democrat you have to question the right of any government to carry out, over such a long period, a policy which results in such significant social change, against the wishes of its people.  Still, that’s British ‘democracy’ for you".

He describes his forebodings of doom: "Population growth is a disaster for Britain.  We are already, in my view, overcrowded and overdeveloped – especially in southeast England.  The idea of allowing, or encouraging, the population to grow by almost a million a year in the name of propping up global capitalism is a joke.  If you are in favour of unlimited immigration you need to be able to explain where all the new houses and roads will go.  And the new schools, hospitals, power plants, superstores and call centres.  You need to be able to explain the impact on our climate change targets.  And what the country will look like at 77 million and rising.  Environmental arguments are always predicated on the existence of limits.  What is the limit here?  When should population growth – and thus immigration – stop?  If you can’t answer that, you are wasting my time".

Sellwood in Greens and Immigration offers his vision of a remedy: "As Paul rightly points out (…), immigration is not caused because people love Britain’s weather or think our party scene can’t be beat.  It’s caused by economic, environmental and social ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, which force people to leave their homes in order to support themselves or better their lives.  The root of this, quite clearly, is the extraordinarily unequal and unjust world we live in, caused by a particular economic system.  The solution to environmental problems is not to create a kind of fortress Britain, where we keep out all others because of our high-energy lifestyles and the impact that has on the environment.  The solution is to change that economic system" (emphasis in original).

Mr Kingsnorth was nominated in his own right for the strikingly titled Why I am a planet-raping fascist, which reiterated his stance in defence of the spiritual dimension of landscapes unravaged by human hands following heated reactions to a contribution in The Guardian condemning the Severn barrage: "1. Renewable energy technologies are not, despite some green claims to the contrary, always harmless.  Some – those which are carried out on a massive scale – can actually be harmful.  The harm is of a different measure to that caused by fossil-fuel burning; it’s harm to the wild landscape.  But it’s harm nonetheless, and we should acknowledge that.

2. Wild places and the non-human world are important both for the biosphere as a whole and for human well being.  They should not be ravaged by human industrial intrusion.  This goes both for motorways and inappropriately-sited windfarms.

3. Environmentalists should be able to talk about crucial but intangible things – like beauty, wildness, stillness, the soul-lifting power of mountains and forests – without feeling ashamed.  They should talk less like economists and more like poets, because if they don’t, the economists have won.  And then we’re really in trouble".

Councillor with a conscience Antonia Bance of Antonia’s Blog reports that 850 jobs go at BMW in Oxford, expressing her sympathy with these casualties of the credit crunch: "How do you go from £250 per week steady, to £60 per week jobseekers’ allowance, with no redundancy pay?  I don’t know, and I’m incredibly sorry for all those workers who don’t know what the future holds for them and their families".

She criticises the Government for having allowed EU legislation, which would have extended protection to such workers, to gather dust on a departmental shelf.  Their “temporary” status belies the fact that they have been employed at the company for anything between two and five years in spite of which they were unceremoniously turfed out onto the street.

Philip Booth of Ruscombe Green encourages us to dig, if not for victory, at least to extricate ourselves from the hole created by the squander-based economy, our addiction to waste, fired up by the findings of a review commissioned by Gordon Brown in More about need for allotments: “The UK’s precarious food supply needs attention – one way is to mobilise the nation’s 11 million gardeners.  They will be able to grow food for their family and for the community and also help spread greater understanding about food, quality and supply”.

According to Philip, a radical change in mindset is a matter of some considerable urgency: “Fewer than 1% of the population now work in agriculture – one of the lowest percentages in the world.  In 1900 this was 40%.  Some 60% of our food is produced domestically, but imports make up a large percentage of food, for example, 90% of fruit is imported, as opposed to 40% in France.  If you look at apples in a supermarket – which used to be Britain’s major fruit – we have hundreds of different domestic varieties which could be cultivated, during the height of the apple season, you will find there are only a few varieties and are mostly imported!  This makes no sense whatsoever (…) It is only possible because cheap fossil fuels allow transportation from far-off countries.  As oil becomes more expensive, this will become uneconomic”.

Vincent Browne’s article in The Irish Times, The crux of our dire problems is political, advocated a not exactly earth-shatteringly new solution to the country’s current economic woes: “The way out of the crisis is blindingly obvious.  Produce a clear plan that requires the rich to bear the burden of the adjustments required and protect the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the vulnerable and children, with the members of the Government leading the way by taking the first and deepest hit.

Instead, no plan.  Just a first hit at public servants – low paid, moderately paid and rich public servants.  And an attack on social welfare payments in the offing.  Isn’t it shameful that we would even contemplate cutting the welfare of people who have lived on annual incomes that would hardly cover the cost of one hour’s flying on the Government jet?”

He went on to voice his dismay at the sluggishness of the Government in postponing any real attempts to tackle the problems until the publication of the report of the Commission on Taxation in September.  He also harbours serious doubts concerning the credibility of the august body as a result of its composition: “This commission has 18 members and is loaded (almost two-thirds) with people who have a vested interest in ensuring that the taxation system does not impinge unduly on the well-heeled.

I don’t mean to impugn the integrity of any of the commission’s members, but merely to draw attention to the reality that they represent and/or come from the wealthier wedge of society; accountants, tax experts, executives from the financial services, a solicitor and the head of the Stock Exchange”.

These complaints inspired Mick Fealty of the redoubtable Slugger O’Toole to ask the pertinent question Can the Irish left get beyond ‘eating the rich’?: “Such leftist populism (or ‘politics of envy’ as others might choose to put it) is one of the reasons the Irish Left has been left in the ha’penny place for so long.  To be successful, the next generation of Irish political leadership will need to be broad enough to tackle the huge range of challenges coming at it”.

Mick then embarks upon a careful examination of an essay in Renewal Magazine by Alex Evans and David Steven entitled Risks and resilience in the new global era, whose authors identify the hamartia of the Left: “Social democrats, finally, understand the importance of public goods and are prepared to act forcefully to protect the vulnerable.  They are also willing to act boldly to manage global instability.  However, they have the weakness of being instinctive meddlers, crowding out the initiative of other actors and risking over-centralisation in the face of distributed risks”.

It is this latter trait that, in Mick’s view, constitutes the most serious obstacle to putting forward a candidate for leading the next government.

Jonathan Calder of Liberal England reminds us that, however rotten things may be in Britain, levels of corruption across the Pond are (for the time being at least) even worse in Those Pennsylvania judges again, alluding to a recent appalling case where two men charged with the task of upholding justice accepted bribes from a private youth detention centre in exchange for guaranteeing a steady supply of inmates.  Jonathan concludes: “(…) their actions have wider importance because they are the logical outcome of allowing the profit motive into the judicial system.

As Rumpole used to remind us, a great many comfortable professional careers are built on the backs of Britain’s criminal classes.  But treating Crime Control as Industry, to quote the title of Nils Christie’s 1993 book, is dangerous”.

Here Mr Calder indeed speaks the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth…

Chris Dillow of Stumbling and Mumbling returns to the theme of Stalinist companies vs. market forces in connection with the spectacular fall from grace of Messrs McKillop and Goodwin (perhaps he might consider changing his name to Badloss).  He recalls a set of objections to his original comparison by Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek, which evidently stuck in his mind: “Relatedly, unlike with government central planning, the size and scope of each firm on the market is itself constantly tested by competition.  A firm that succeeds today might be bankrupted tomorrow if another firm out-competes it.  That is, the sizes of firms in markets are themselves the result of market experimentation, competition, and discovery – experimentation, competition, and discovery that is never static.

(…) Sure some firms might be too large – but, if so, they’re too large with resources voluntarily contributed.  And in both cases, the forces of competition and entrepreneurial discovery – fuelled in large part by the profit motive and by consumers’ quotidian efforts to get the most value for their money – put constant pressure on big firms to correct their errors.

Managers of even the largest private firms – that are not protected by government from competition or swaddled with state favours – are simply not comparable to central planners in socialist countries”.

Against the backdrop of emerging facts about the authoritarian culture within the bank, Dillow’s analogy has been found to have some merit after all: “Well, it turns out that the RBS was just like a centrally planned economy, complete with the suppression of dissent and cult of personality.  And look what happened.  I’m vindicated.  Or am I?”

I leave it up to you to decide for yourselves.

Arden Forester of A View from Middle England lambastes Labour for its arrogance in taking for granted the unwavering support of the most disadvantaged whilst simultaneously abandoning them to their fate.  Following the party’s defeat in elections to Sevenoaks Council, the BNP might even succeed in gaining a toehold in the European Parliament, Mr Forester speculates.  In Labour flunkies warn Brown over BNP Euro chances, he hazards a guess as to why: “Labour needs to address the core problems affecting people who are attracted to the BNP.  Housing, jobs, schools and hospitals.  These four are the ones that affect these voters most.  These are the issues the BNP are exploiting.  Gordon Brown needs to get his jacket off and get down to the level where the BNP can be taken on.  It’s no use taking a lofty attitude and saying he won’t debate with them.  That over sensitive nonsense should stop right now”.

Cabalamat of Amused Cynicism informs us that the world’s most notorious terrorist has been disowned even by those who could be assumed to be closest to him in Al-Qa’ida’s founder condemns bin Laden, concluding on an optimistic note that: “I think this is a sign that Islamist extremism is on the wane.  It has manifestly failed to deliver the goods, and so is likely to recede from now onwards, and by 2015-2020 it’ll be apparent that it is on the way out”.

I sincerely hope that he is right.

In Single parents, socialist feminism and the right to equal work, Penny Red denounces a fresh assault on benefit payments for the most vulnerable, which would, she tells us, compel lone mothers back into work before their infants are even able to walk and talk.  Apart from the inconsistency of conveniently overlooking that the majority of children living in poverty have at least one parent who works whilst repeating the incantation that the path to redemption for single mothers is through remunerated employment in an environment where the wages earned would be extremely unlikely to stretch to covering the cost of childcare, Penny objects to the more fundamental underlying assumption that bringing up offspring somehow fails to qualify as worthwhile toil: “Let’s make one thing spectacularly, sparklingly clear: being the primary carer of a small child is work – hard work, unending work, work that can last an entire lifetime, work that defines the term ‘labour of love’.  It’s work whether a man or woman does it, although it continues to fall into the historic category of work that women contribute to the economy for free, ‘women’s work’, work undeserving of pay or professional respect.  But, not content with giving single parents with no other means of support a minimum of basic care rather than a liveable salary, the Welfare Reform Bill seeks to force single parents into extra, unpaid work, work that will not even raise their standard of living above the poverty threshold.  That’s extra, paid work that isn’t actually available at the moment, in case you’d forgotten”.

Then there is the element of class stigmatisation: “Women who do not work outside the home, but who do not need government support because they are independently rich or because they have a partner who works, are not considered to be ‘playing the system’, not by the D[epartment for] W[ork and] P[ensions] and certainly not by the Evening Standard group – even though the only difference between these women and single mothers on benefits is the good fortune to be born with money or marry it.  If the world were a late-night tube carriage, the social hypocrisy of the British state would be fumblingly revealing itself in the corner.

In this hyper-capitalist world, power and respect are afforded to those who earn wages – are distributed, in fact, in the form of wages.  By paying a decent, liveable salary to those women and men who have primary responsibility for a child – a wage which they can spend on maintaining themselves out of paid work, or on decent childcare whilst they perform alternative work – we might well fix not only the nation’s soaring unemployment crisis, but go some way towards erasing the breathtaking poverty and hypocrisy of our socially bankrupt self-organisation.  Hey, I’m 22, so I’m bloody well allowed to dream about social justice in vivid technicolour”.

Penalising single mothers, those figures of collective loathing pilloried by the press is a cheap way of being seen not to be a soft touch, of being seen to not be Old Labour, kicking the group least likely to retaliate.  The focus is on these women’s fecklessness, their presumed irresponsibility and immorality, flaw after flaw heaped upon them until they suffocate because it is easier to apportion blame than to confront factors such as the chronic lack of provision of affordable child care.  If you aspire to a career, as opposed to some part-time, low status, insecure and meagre source of income with little by way of satisfaction or advancement, you soon realise that access to the upper echelons is predicated on the anachronistic assumption of complete availability, that the default setting continues to be that the worker is unencumbered with external commitments (dependents , in other words) and has a demure helpmeet at home to take care of the practicalities of running a household.  You have to be both willing and able to put in the hours in exchange for progression, the downside of a high salary that of renouncing the right to a personal life.

This brings us to the heart of what is at stake: the extent of compassion and solidarity within society.

The ease with which it is possible to glide from single mothers (the contemporary embodiment of the "undeserving poor") placing an undue strain on social welfare systems to denying social undesirables the right to reproduce is illustrated by Ross of Unenlightened Commentary in Fun With Eugenics, which starts off with a seemingly innocent throwaway observation: “On another blog I got into a discussion about the topic yesterday, after initially making a half joking remark about wanting to stop the likes of Karen Matthews and ‘Alfie’ popping out dozens of kids for the good of society, I could have mentioned the mother of octuplets as well” (the debate in question is on Tim Worstall’s blog, the comments – where they do not degenerate into unedifying name-calling – are interesting and I can recommend their perusal accordingly).

Ross favours a reappraisal of our negative attitudes: “Eugenics is strongly associated with the savagery of the Nazis and is therefore pretty much the ultimate taboo.  Personally I think the ethical problem with 20th century advocates of eugenics is that they had no respect for civil liberties and believed in the right of the state to forcibly restrict people’s right to reproduce.  It doesn’t therefore follow that there is something intrinsically wicked about non-coercive eugenics”.

I do not wish to misrepresent the contents of the piece, but it is one proposition to talk about eliminating debilitating diseases, which detract from the quality of life and and an altogether different one to think in terms of social as opposed to genetic markers, to eliminate the poor through sterilisation (even where discouragement rather than compulsion is viewed as the way forward).  Ross admits: “When it comes to encouraging the well off to reproduce themselves and the less well off to not do so then it really depends to what extent socio-economic status is influenced by genes, which is altogether a murkier question”.

The meaning of “unfit” is variable in accordance with prevalent cultural values and can be extended to any stigmatised group.  Why stop at the propensity to commit crime?  Why not get rid of the fatties, the homosexuals, women (couples who want to select the gender of their babies generally long for boys), the disabled, and whilst we’re at it, I’m sure our most beneficent leaders would be eager to eradicate the obstreperousness gene, leaving a citizenry of placid drones devoid of character or creativity.  Rather than embark upon such insanity, surely it would be preferable to restore greater mobility, giving the maximum number of people the maximum possible opportunities.  If you are not expected to do well because of the humbleness of your origins, you can either rebel (as I did), proving your detractors wrong or you can listen to them and allow yourself to be browbeaten into submission.

Susanne Lamido of Suz Blog alerts us to what might deteriorate into the latest assault on our civil liberties, the likes of which have never been seen outside the confines of public swimming baths (although in the latter, petting was discouraged, a peck on the cheek considered harmless) in Watch out for the kissing police at Warrington Station.  Personally, after every other incremental paring away at our rights, I am not remotely reassured by the claim that the sign is nothing more than a bit of light-hearted fun.  I wouldn’t put it past some joyless warden whose sole pleasure in life is that of wielding the minute bit of power at his disposal to relish the task of enforcing a ban on public displays of affection.  The slippery slope towards breeding restrictions suddenly does not seem so outlandish…

Refreshing proof that online activism is not a mere exercise in futility is to be found in The F-Word credited for major rethink of “Cervix Savvy” advertising campaign.

Finally, from Witterings from Witney, by way of light relief, the unmissably hilarious Darling Brown’s Salvation?

Blogging

In the latest in a series of entries charting the genesis and evolution of Labour List, Matt Wardman helpfully provides us with an Archive of an attempted ‘blog-mugging’, a sordid and ugly tale of a kind with which we have sadly become only too familiar.  Matt’s verdict: “The alleged threats to close down websites, whoever they came from (!), and to undermine the livelihoods of targeted people, were on a par with the dodgiest manoeuvres I have seen in the blogosphere since I started this site – which are a small number of attempts to get people in trouble with their employers; taking political arguments offline to do personal damage is beyond the pale”.

This does nothing to encourage me to overcome my distaste and investigate Labour List in any depth.  Matt’s assessment is good enough for me (it would take something truly extraordinary to convince me that blogs by politicians are anything but parasitical drivel barely worth the pixels they are composed of): “Derek Draper’s past indiscretions aside, my main problem here is that all the top names seem to see it as a medium to publish bland rubbish that sounds similar to a press release.  It’s boring and lame, and will end up like the far more abysmal Tory effort: The Blue Blog.  Hell, that’s so bad even Iain Dale doesn’t plug it anymore.

Draper has given it personality by ringing up people and picking fights with them, but that’s only going to work for so long.  The point is: if your top bloggers (cabinet ministers) are only going to write boring comment pieces without seeing what others are saying of Labour’s policies and responding to them, then it’s a waste of space.  If we wanted press releases we can go to Labour.org.uk”.

Culture

Ever adept at whetting the appetite for travel, Natalie Bennett has branched out geographically, moving beyond London to My Burgundy, Your Burgundy.  In The Museums of Beaune: The Hotel-Dieu and the Wine Museum she gives us a fascinating insight into some of the region’s attractions: "It’s hard to imagine now, that the Chambre des Pauvres (chamber of the poor) of the Hotel-Dieu was the ideal place for a poor person, for much of its history.  No private rooms here: the huge church-shaped chamber, with its high ceilings and stark stone walls, could hardly ever have been quiet or peaceful, not when the ill were lying in head-to-toe rows along its walls, and the religious sisters who tended them were bustling around.  Still, it was undoubtedly a beautiful place to be sick, and one of the few places where you could expect succour and the best medical care that the past five centuries could offer".

Diamond Geezer of the eponymous blog, that ever-reliable guide to the hidden delights of the capital, takes us on a tour of Valentine’s at Valentines, the reference being to the canny publicity ploy on the part of a council to reopen a renovated mansion to the public on the day dedicated to sending tokens of admiration from afar in the form of tacky cards and red roses: “The good people of Redbridge crowded the rooms and passageways, taking a first opportunity to explore every nook and cranny.  They swarmed round the single interactive history terminal so that nobody else could use it.  they crammed into the tiny shop on the first floor, inspecting its stock of plastic rulers, honey and notelets.  They allowed their uncontrollable offspring to bounce on the four-poster in the bedchamber, much to the annoyance of the lady on duty”.

Peter Ashley of that veritable blog of delights Unmitigated England brings to our attention yet another of those unobtrusive decorative features that alleviate the monotony of the daily commute and lift the spirits, this time at Stamford Station in Unexpected Alphabets No8.

Miscellaneous

Carlotta of Dare to Know, condemns the portrayal of home schooling in BBC series Waterloo Road, which has strayed far from Reith’s injunction to the Corporation to educate, inform, entertain, in Prejudice is IGNORANCE: “(…) amongst our home educating bunch here, it is exceedingly rare to find them closeted in oppressed, highly controlled fashion round a computer in a front room.  Yes, sure they use a computer, but most of the time, it is doing what they want to do, and therefore they are enjoying it.  There is usually a considerable spark of energy emanating from rooms with children using PCs as they would like to use them”.

Bystander of The Magistrate’s Blog divulges the secrets of his calling after four years of keeping his readers in suspense in So What Do We Actually Do, Then?: “A court might be city-centre urban with the attendant problems (such as Haringey or Camberwell Green), suburban (such as Sutton), or predominantly rural (e.g. Hereford).  Dover has the port (smuggling and immigration scams), Crawley has Gatwick (ditto).  Courts in Suffolk know all about moving pigs without a licence, and those in Devon and Cornwall are pretty familiar with what tourists can get up to after an all day session on the beer”.

Mark Myers of Nee-Naw rejoices at the prospect of a change in instructions that will usher in a new era, drastically cutting down on the number of call-outs to non-urgent cases (a problem that has never assumed such proportions in Waffleland, largely due, I suspect, to the fact that the patient has to fork out €100 a whack for the privilege of an ambulance), an instance where rationalisation in the NHS ought to provoke delight rather than despondency in Cotton Bud in Ear = Life Threatening Emergency: “The infamous ‘are you breathing normally’ question is completely gone from a lot of protocols, and when it IS there, a ‘yes’ only results in an amber response, not a red.  The rationale, which I totally agree with, is that if the breathing was that much of a problem, they’d have told us at the beginning of the call.

I can’t wait for this new protocol to come in.  It is going to decrease frustration levels in call takers, allocators and ambulance crews no end, and more importantly, we won’t end up having to waste ambulances on rubbish when people who are really sick are still waiting”.

Next week’s Roundup will be hosted by Jackart at A Very British Dude, which is looking impressively snazzy following its makeover!  Rota details and a complete archive may be found at the Britblog Central website.  As ever, nominations should be sent to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com

If you are going to engage in an act of wanton vandalism, at least ensure that it is guaranteed to amuse the casual passer-by…

The perfect illustration of how to combine the impulse to deflate pomposity with wit is surely this shop front in Budapest (with thanks to Dino, from whom I commissioned this photo, as lugging my heavy bag of equipment to Hungary for the holidays was not a priority).

The rain stretched time, confining us to the sitting room where paperback Westerns, Louis L’Amour, J T Edson, the adventures of Dusty Fogg in a dry and dusty climate, lined the shelves, spines creased.  Jigsaw puzzle pieces were spread over the round table, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Zeus enthroned, dwarfing his worshippers.  Proceed from the outside in and never succumb to frustration.

In the hallway, the bannister provided a groove just wide enough to send a Corgi die-cast metal car  careering down to smash against the wall (or latterly a hamster could clamber up or down for exercise depending on which direction he was faced in).  The entertainment value of the constant banging was lost on the adults, who shouted at us to play Old Maid or patience, but were reluctant to chase us outdoors, knowing that our wellies would quickly acquire thick crusts of mud, which would inevitably end up on the hallway carpet.  We would never take shelter in the barn for fear of the rats.  When the jets came thundering down the valley on their low altitude practice runs we would watch the rodents leap across the gap separating their customary abode amongst the pile of hay from the abandoned cottage, sent into panic by the din.

The next obstacle on the way down to the shore was the byre with its corrugated iron roof where the Old Bull lived out his retirement.  His enormous black head and nose ring intimidated us, though curiosity rather than malice prompted him to snort at us as we hurried by, hardly daring to look at him, the fence separating us too rickety for comfort.  Even now, so many years after he has passed into the realm of childhood memory, vivid emotionally, yet blurred like an ancient Polaroid snapped by an unsteady hand, his presence lingers on, in spite of the stable being converted to a boat shed.  All the cows have likewise departed, along with the clover patches by the front doorstep I scanned for four-leafed specimens to press between the pages of my dictionary.

The kitchen was the heart of the cottage, where we ate round a table (at home the imperatives of our respective timetables precluded such coordination, my brother and I devouring our mince and tatties in front of the telly, wooden trays resting on our laps).  My Mother and Auntie Cathy kept the kettle boiling for mugs of tea on demand, with water from the spring.  The stain left behind testifying to the strength of the brew.  A drop of milk only, no sugar for my Mother, my Father adding three tiny Hermesetas to the two heaped teaspoons of marginally less artificial sweetener.

The approach of teatime (our cousins, brought up in their refined Edinburgh milieu might have eaten lunch, but our meals were known as breakfast, dinner, tea and supper) was signalled by the spreading of a dishcloth over the draining board upon which to deposit the freshly peeled potatoes before transferring them to the chip pan.  Spry Crisp ‘n Dry, sheets of kitchen roll on a large plate to soak up any oil in excess of what the slogan claimed.  The radio with its impressive array of dials and exotic names of foreign broadcasters, our sole link to the world beyond the stone walls and boundary fences, was switched on by Uncle Ronnie who filled the room with the sickly fragrance of tobacco from his pipe as he listened to the news in the armchair beside the range, wader-swathed legs stretched out to assert his dominance through occupation of the maximum amount of space.

I would drift off to sleep in the bed at the top of the landing once the stars had become visible through the skylight to the sound of big band music and the laughter of competitive team whist punctuated by Ronnie’s clamouring for yet another dram.

My Mother’s alcohol consumption was restricted to a couple of glasses of sherry at Hogmanay.  I would half-wake before turning back to the wall as she made her way downstairs to wash any dishes left from the evening before.  These were the few precious moments to herself with no one to interrupt her thoughts (even the locked toilet door did not act as a deterrent to our persistent demands and impatient knocking).  She would smoke an Embassy Regal and stare out of the window in the groggy morning light that staggered through the pane but could not muster the strength to banish the shadows.  The steam from the spout of the kettle could not dispel the chill, the crumpled newspapers and kindling in the range stove nestled beneath lumps of coal awaiting combustion.  She felt a prickling at the back of her neck and turned round to see a stranger ensconced in Ronnie’s chair.  The old man said nothing and she turned back to the sink, pouring boiling water into the teapot for the unexpected guest.  When the leaves had infused to her satisfaction, she placed the silver strainer over the cup, picking up the jug to allow him to determine for himself how much milk he wanted, but he was gone.

The swifts darted in and out of their mud nests in the barn’s rafters on the brighter mornings, but she would never be startled again by the botach as he shared her respite, always dressed the same, ready for a day’s work on the croft, a bonnet for warmth and sturdy boots.  In anticipation of his arrival, she would leave a cup out for him, and he would always have vanished prior to the creaking of the stairs that heralded imminent interruption.

During one of our last stays in the cottage, we were awakened by a scream of undiluted terror.  Ronnie had been stirred from his slumber by the ache of a full bladder and slipped out of bed to head for the bathroom, accessed through the kitchen.  In the light of the embers, he had spotted an intruder, impossible given that he had locked the front door himself.  Once we children had been persuaded that the commotion was nothing to worry about, my Mother admitted to her knowledge of the apparition, that he was quite harmless.

Today the cottage has been gutted, refurbished beyond recognition to a luxury holiday rental, the range reduced from functionality to the status of decorative feature, the mirror from the sitting room fixed to the wall above it.  The olive-green carpet with its layers of accumulated dirt long since ousted by a soulless yet easily mopped laminate, upon which even the merest toast crumb would offend the eye, the sharp glare of halogen lights casting out the encroaching gloom of twilight.  Bar stools replace the leather armchair with its tartan blanket, offering nowhere for an old man to settle and reminisce.  Only sometimes, when the house has fallen silent and all the lights but for the one on the bedside table have been extinguished, might you be disturbed by a sudden draught from the kitchen as you turn to climb the stairs.

Bunches of grapes hang improbably from the naked vines that drape the fence, some maintaining the deception of succulence, others wizened, shrinking away from the wind’s icy probings.  The progress of pedestrians towards the bus stop is charted in sound by the barking of dogs banished to gardens, the raised hackles of guard duty, a display of ferocity encouraged by the protective barrier of the gate.

Our arrival had proven smoother than anticipated, the airport authorities having imported scabs from elsewhere in Europe to alleviate the chaos caused by the strike, throngs of disgruntled passengers queuing to pass through the metal detectors.

We removed out outdoor shoes, but not our coats or scarves, as the heating could not be coaxed into life, turning the thermostat dial to full blast nothing more than an exercise in misplaced optimism.  Even taking refuge beneath double eiderdown-filled duvets offered little comfort (and after the plumber had shown us how to bleed the pipes several hours elapsed before we noticed any difference in temperature, G dragging a foam mattress and bedding down to the boiler room’s dark yet warm confines).

Mass redundancies and industrial action exacerbate the winter gloom.  “Balkan wages, EU prices!” the slogan neatly encapsulating the woes of the average Hungarian.  According to Professor László Bogár, the cost of the weekly shop is 20% cheaper in Austria, whilst salaries across the border are over four times higher.

A dead swallow putrefies slowly in front of the conservatory pane, the agent of its demise.

Having unloaded the provisions, four 750g jars of Speculoos paste and Cherry Bakewells (which have ousted Bramley Apple Pies in my son’s fickle teenage affections), we clambered into the fostalicska [diarrhoea wheelbarrow], alternatively nicknamed the Commiemobile (in spite of having been manufactured in the decadent capitalist West), our conveyance for the duration of the holiday, to pick up G the following morning.  Halfway round the ring road (with the recently opened elegant suspension bridge, not named according to the outcome of the public poll, after Chuck Norris, the will of the people having been deemed too vulgar, though one of the other suggestions, Géza Hofi, would have been a fitting tribute to the much-loved comedian), the car, which boasts the dubious distinction of being the cheapest four-wheel drive vehicle in the entire country, a 22-year-old Toyota Tercel, began shuddering and simultaneously producing alarming metallic clanking noises, as if imminently about to blow itself to bits (I kept on peering through the back window, expecting to see the exhaust pipe being unceremoniously jettisoned onto the pristine tarmac, a strange repetition of when my Mother had driven me to be interviewed at Herriot-Watt University in her Austin Allegro, Sam).  Somehow the Hungarian managed to cajole it as far as the car park, half an hour after G had landed.

The final breakdown only happened a third of the way along the main road from the airport.  It wasn’t the fault of the bone-juddering potholes, between which drivers of more delicate or expensive vehicles swerve in the Demszky slalom, as the fostalicska has amply demonstrated its imperviousness to such punishment.  We pulled over onto a mud track running parallel to the official lane, plunging into puddles before grinding to a definitive halt beneath a hoarding with a gleaming-toothed beauty seductively sipping coffee (conveniently near a bus stop, although, this being Hungary, you cannot purchase a ticket on board, and we were able to ascertain from a friendly passer-by that neither an orange BKV machine nor a trafik kiosk was within easy walking distance).   Right on cue, when our initial amusement at the misfortune that had befallen us was on the brink of turning sour, a taxi appeared (we joked that the fare home would almost exceed the value of the Commiemobile).  We wondered whether, having just filled the tank, we would return with a tow to discover that it had been siphoned into a jerry can – nothing would really have surprised us by that stage, as, when we had lent the car to our friend Predator, someone had attempted to break in, making it impossible to open the front door on the passenger side (consigning me to the back seat, only G being lithe enough to clamber over).  Beyond a rancid old blanket, the only conceivable booty could be the built-in radio, as ancient as the car itself.  Nobody but the truly desperate would consider stealing it.

In an effort to salvage some cheer after our minor mishaps, G and the Hungarian brought back a trophy of the seasonal slaughter of immature firs, a magnificent specimen from Norway, which we proceeded to decorate in breach of local tradition (the custom here involves adorning the tree with tinsel and baubles on the evening of the 24th).  We had managed a trip to the hypermarket prior to heading for the airport, filling several carrier bags with szaloncukor, which we attached to threads and draped over the branches.  The Hungarian has an annoying habit of plundering the contents of the shiny wrappers but not removing them, so that numerous disappointments precede chocolatey gratification.  This year, the sweets are colour-coded: silver for yoghurt flavour, red with silver bells and blue bows for rum and cocoa and red with stars for strawberry-jelly.

Welcome to the pre-festive edition of the Britblog Roundup, where the relative dearth of nominations suggests that shopping delirium (jostling for bargains or the must-have toy of the year, unless you prefer the less stressful, sedentary online version, so accurately described by Gordon McLean of Informationally Overloaded in Sneaky) has taken hold.  Not that I am  the annual blues-banishing splurge.   Think of this week’s Roundup as a seasonal tin of Quality Street without the cracknel (I implore you not to clutter the comments box with protestations if the red-wrappered delight was your favourite).

Politics

Jim Jay of The Daily (Maybe), in The terror of unlicensed paperboys, highlights yet another grossly disproportionate application of anti-terror legislation by a local council to a situation, which does not by any stretch of the imagination warrant such a response.  In essence, a couple of newsagents were hauled before court following a covert surveillance operation because of some minor irregularity with the required paperwork.  The grotesque absurdity of it cannot help but remind me of Terry Gilliam’s only too prophetic masterpiece Brazil…when Sam is visited by rogue heating engineer Harry Tuttle and the authorised Central Services operatives, whom he is able to send packing with a strategic demand for a 27B/6.

Jim rhetorically mulls over which of the possible courses of remedying the hiccup would have been the more sensible:

"Option one: phone them up and ask them to sort out the paperwork.  After all there is no question of fraud being involved or improper behaviour, it’s just some forms that need to be signed.  There’s not even any money owed as far as I can work out.

Option two: let’s get James Bond on their asses!  Yeah, it costs more.  Yeah, it’s heavy handed and unnecessary.  Yeah, it turns the council from the servant of the community into a domineering, out of control watchdog.  But on the plus side you get to play at spies!"

It’s enough to make you positively hanker after the good old days when the power-crazed park wardens stalked the children straying across their territory on the way home from school ready to pounce on the litterbug who had the temerity to drop an empty crisp packet.  Nowadays, such wrongdoers would probably acquire a criminal record and have DNA samples taken to be stored in the national database in perpetuity on the fatuous assumption that trivial breaches betray a propensity towards escalation, today’s miscreant spitting flavour-spent chewing gum onto the pavement mutating into tomorrow’s serial killer.

Diamond Geezer displays a gift for satire with a hilarious parody of The State Opening of Parliament, ably cutting through the mystifications of pomp and circumstance to venture a guess at what might actually have been going through Her Majesty’s mind whilst reading her script.  A tiny excerpt to illustrate:

"My Government will waffle on a lot about fairness.  My Government will ban pubs and bars from running extra specially cheap drinks promotions, although it’ll still be possible to binge drink on value lager from the corner shop.  My Government had better not raise duty on sherry, else that’s one’s Christmas ruined".

Two Doctors examine the practical impact of recent policy to lift us out of the financial doldrums in VAT boost in Parliament canteen.

Philip Booth of Ruscombe Green deplores the Shameful decision to expand Gloucestershire’s Airport.  Campaigners gathered to articulate their views with humour: "(…) there was a peaceful demonstration, by opponents of the plans, on the steps of the Council offices.  featuring a cheque made out to the ‘Gloucestershire Airport White Elephant’ for ‘Many many millions of pounds’ and a banner featuring a flaying white elephant emitting clouds of CO2 from its behind".

Derek Wall, of Another Green World, reviews a British anarchist periodical in Black Flag: pirates with a purpose, a task which he approaches with  scrupulous fairness, declaring his own affiliations before proceeding to his appraisal.

 

Feminism (Motherhood, Murder and Madness)

Motherhood

"The psychoanalysts had constructed the ideal mother to go with the permissively raised child – one who would find passionate fulfillment in the details of child care.  Through her newfound biological instincts, this new ‘libidinal mother’ was an even better match than the ‘household engineer’ for the liberated child of permissive theory.  Not only would she naturally fulfil her child’s needs, but she would find her own fulfillment only in meeting the needs of the child.  The libidinal mother would rejoice in pregnancy and breast-feeding.  She would seek no richer companionship than that of her own child, no more serious concern than the daily details of child care.  She instinctively needed her child as much as her child needed her.  She would avoid outside commitments so as not to ‘miss’ a fascinating stage of development, or ‘deprive’ herself of a rewarding phase of motherhood.  No longer would motherhood be reckoned as a ‘duty’, or child raising as a disciplined profession.  Instead, mother and child could enjoy each other, fulfilling one another’s needs perfectly, instinctively, as if Nature in her infinite wisdom had created them, two happily matched consumers consuming each other"

Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women, New York, Anchor Books, 2005, p243 (emphasis in original)

Far from being static, notions of ideal motherhood expand and contract to fit the exigencies of the moment as snugly as certain nappies claim to envelop an infant’s bottom, as the above example shows.

At The F-Word, Victoria Dutchman-Smith dismisses the lazy supposition that rejecting the dominant cultural construct of motherhood constitutes an attack on motherhood itself in Why feminists shouldn’t have to keep mum:

"While I love being a mother, I resent the current cult of motherhood in our society.  It’s something feminists need to challenge, instead of feeling it’s a thing they need to adapt to and be oh-so-polite about.  When I was on maternity leave following the birth of my son, the loneliness I felt at being out of the workplace and spending all day with someone who couldn’t talk was compounded by the fact that when I did meet with other mothers, the contemporary cult of motherhood required me to hold my tongue.  It’s not that no-one talks about the physical and mental challenges of being a mother.  Women do, all the time (even though the same discussions on cracked nipples and tantrums in Sainsbury’s are treated as ‘taboo breaking’ each time they arise).  The trouble is, while we’re all allowed to say how difficult it is, no-one’s allowed to say that it’s too difficult and needs to change, because that would be seen as undermining the very roles with which we’re struggling.  So we get nowhere or, worse, we learn to seek value in all the things that could be so much better if only we’d try to alter them".

She continues: "Feminism has a long tradition of promoting fairness, equality and choice, things that enable women to be respected as complete human beings worth just as much as men.  If we ask feminists to sympathise with cultural trends that militate against such ideals, we weaken the fight for equality to the extent of it becoming meaningless.  For instance, it is not reasonable to ask feminists to treat essentialist and non-essentialist views on the roles of mothers and fathers as though they are equal, just because not to do so will offend some mothers and fathers.  It doesn’t matter to me how you choose to run your own household.  It does, however, matter that the view that mummy does one thing, daddy does another, currently holds sway over our parental leave laws and limits the freedom of individuals to make their own choices.  It matters that many children are being brought up with restricted views of what women and men do, simply because the essentialist views of their parents are held to be off-limits in feminist debate.  It might upset some mothers to say that their femaleness is not intrinsic to how they act as parents.  But it isn’t, and to claim otherwise isn’t to take a neutral ‘all things are equal’ approach.  It’s to say mixed-gender couples who achieve an equal division of labour and perform similar roles are somehow doing it wrong.  And why should we put up with that, just so that others feel their personal choices, choices we have no interest in challenging, are viewed as superior?  I don’t care if an individual woman chooses to take on all childcare responsibilities, if this is the division of labour that works for her and her partner.  I do, however, care if this particular allocation of roles is claimed to be ‘natural’ and any deviation from this taken as a personal insult.  If we believe in choices, we cannot validate one person’s choice at the expense of everyone else’s.  That leaves us with no choice at all".

Aminatta Forna, in her 1998 book Mother of All Myths (London, Harper Collins): "Nothing exemplifies the paradox of motherhood as a state which is both revered and reviled, natural and yet policed, more clearly than the issue of breastfeeding.  Bottle-feeding is frowned upon and the pressure on mothers to breastfeed is immense, yet there are still very many people in the UK who regard the sight of a breastfeeding woman as obscene.  In August 1997  a woman breastfeeding her child in a courtyard had water thrown over her by a disgusted shopkeeper.  She turned out to be an Express newspaper journalist and the story, which was carried on the front page the next day’s newspaper, prompted a national discussion.  many people, including Anne Winterton MP, supported the shopkeeper’s view that women should breastfeed out of sight, but in Britain there are extremely few public breastfeeding facilities and the combined effect of public disapproval and lack of facilities keeps breastfeeding mothers virtually homebound" (pp7-8).

Since then depressingly little has changed (although, as Britblog’s own cabalamat points out, legislation has been passed in Scotland to prevent the kind of unpleasant incident catalogued below from occurring).

Laurie Penny, at Liberal Conspiracy, wins the Most Excruciating Pun of the Week for the title of her post on the politics of breastfeeding, No thanks for the mammaries (the cross-posting at her own website has a slightly less groanworthy version, Milking it), not that this should deter you from reading an important denunciation of hypocrisy and its pernicious impact on women’s lives, a piece prompted by the expulsion of a nursing mother from a Soho café.  Laurie writes:

"Breasts are the most fetishised part of the human body, bar none.  They have been drawn, painted, photographed, filmed, fantasised, mythologised and obsessed over by the men who are told to desire them and by the women who are taught to ‘make the most’ of them for centuries.  Most girls’ and women’s rooms are stuffed with apparatus to push them out, plump them up, pull them apart, squeeze them together, flatten them down and otherwise force them to resemble the platonic ideal of the fantasy pneumatic breast, currently achievable only by surgery and a certain type of mesomorphic 19-year-old.  Walk down any street, open any newspaper and you’ll be confronted with bosom after computer-enhanced, barely-concealed bosom.  And yet, whenever there’s the slightest risk of boobs being exposed in the course of their most natural function, we whip ourselves up into a moral frenzy.

Many cafés, restaurants and other social spaces, along with a significant part of the population in general, have a problem with breastfeeding in public.  And occasionally, this will enter the public domain, feminists will clamour their protest, a legion of (mostly male) prudes will harp on about hygiene and social decency and the fact that it just isn’t done, and when everyone has calmed down nothing will have changed.  breastfeeding – the biological function of the human mammary gland – has remained socially unacceptable in public, a distasteful function of feminine biology seen as akin to leaving a streaming open wound unbandaged".

Alongside the issues highlighted by Laurie of male "ownership" of and "entitlement" to women’s bodies and breastfeeding as a form of labour, I would add that of women’s freedom of movement and equal occupation of public space.  Nursing mothers should not be relegated to the home, condemned to the isolation and stultification that caring for an infant involves simply because a delicate builder might swoon on the scaffolding at the sight of a suckling babe.

Murder

Why bother with The Daily Mail as a feminist when you know, you just know before you even that it will make your blood boil?  The short answer is that you cannot engage in cultural critique and cannot bring about change if you simply ignore anything you don’t like, that makes you seethe.  That represents the unsavoury antithesis of your most cherished beliefs.  Its circulation figures put the Middle-England Gazette in a different league to, say, Socialist Worker, when it comes to influencing, or perhaps more accurately, cementing attitudes further.  On his mission to discover the essence of the English mind in its contemporary manifestation, Julian Baggini regarded the paper as the Oracle, the Fount of All Popular Wisdom: "But if we are to really understand the English philosophy, we need to know the values that, together with these facts, produce the folk political philosophy.  You can find clues to what these values are by reading the Mail and the Sun.  During my stay in S66 I read only these papers and their Sunday equivalents regularly.  The reason for this was that these are far and away the most popular newspapers in the country, and as such reflect the reality of mainstream English opinion more accurately than others.  The Sun sells over three million copies each day, while the Daily Mail alone sells in excess of two million – more than The Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Independent combined.  The tabloid press does have the power to shape opinion, but this power is not limitless.  The papers that do best are those which reflect the basic values their readers already have.  If they fail to strike a chord, they just won’t sell.  That’s why, although imperfect, they are more reliable barometers of national opinion than many would like to think" (Welcome to Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind, London, Granta Books, 2007, p62).

By way of a footnote concerning the paper’s appeal: "Its main purpose seems to be to inspire fear.  The reason for this is that it serves a segment of the population that wants to maintain its middle-class status yet is only one step removed from the traditional working-class.  No one who was truly secure in their middle-class status would be so anxious to proclaim it so loudly and feel it was under such a threat" (Baggini, op. cit., p27).

Kate Smurthwaite of Cruella Blog dissects Jon Ronson’s article claiming to explore the motives behind Chris Foster’s murders in The Daily Male Blame Game.  She fulminates with moral outrage inspired by the sympathy for his actions expressed by his friend:

"Are you hearing what I’m hearing?  That the reason Chris Foster murdered his wife and daughter was because of the difficulties of getting divorced?  The article glosses over things like his being a member of a shooting club where all the members tell obscene jokes and talk about suicide.  The article doesn’t bother to expand on the risks of the fact that he collected guns as a hobby.  And when his career is mentioned it is to suggest that the state has no right to reclaim money owed by Foster".

However, Mrs Foster had not deserted him: "But most incredibly of all after all this: Chris Foster wasn’t getting divorced.  His wife knew he had no less than eight mistresses and yet still ‘played the dutiful wife’.  Clearly she would have been much much MUCH better off if she had gotten divorced a long time ago.  But that’s not what the ‘Femail’ section is there to tell women, is it?  Not when they can have a male journalist tell them it’s their own fault when they’re murdered".

Having ploughed my way through it in the interests of informed comment, might I venture an alternative reading, without wishing to undermine the Kate’s criticisms of the more egregious flaws in Ronson’s effort.  The original piece focuses on trying to figure out what made Foster tick, what could drive a seemingly ordinary and inoffensive man to the brutal and meticulously planned execution of those whom he was supposed to cherish most.  It is concerned with "humanising" him (which some might feel is a reprehensible undertaking in itself, particularly taking into account the type of denigratory vocabulary reserved for young hooligans running riot on council estates) and is pervaded by a prurient fascination about his wealth and lifestyle, which, far from being gratuitous, explains the timing of publication (the murders were committed in August) as well as revealing the author’s actual agenda. 

From the very outset, Ronson concentrates on social class and respectability, Foster and his family living in the midst of an elite of self-made millionaires.  He is more than slightly irked on arrival by the police tailing him, their suspicion aroused because he gives the appearance of being an undesirable intruder, too scruffy to be a journalist, lowering the tone of the neighbourhood, the poshness of which is reiterated again and again. 

We are told the story of how he acquired his wealth: an inspired idea.  Eager to purchase all the trappings of his new-found status (some of which, such as the personalised number plates for his wife’s car, we are encouraged to view as rather vulgar), he moved in with the smart gated community set.  Indeed, he was profligate to the extent that his business was ruined. 

What we are being invited to contemplate is the unfathomability of evil in plush, respectable surroundings.  It contradicts all the cliches about wife-battering and spouse murder being the preserve of the "lower orders", wealth and education miraculously inoculating you against the disease.  Bafflement prevails amongst his acquaintances and neighbours.  The ability of Foster’s close friend to empathise with his crime indeed smacks of an insidious let-off clause.  According to this conventional line of argument, Foster was acting out of character under extreme pressure, the classic "she drove him to it" with incessant nagging, infidelity or whatever other handy excuse presents itself (see Helena Kennedy, Eve was Framed, London, Chatto and Windus, 1992, pp68-9: "Half of all female murder victims are killed by a husband or lover.  In the majority of these cases male defendants mount of defence of provocation: that their wives’ conduct drove them to a sudden loss of control.  Within the male stronghold of the court it is all too easy to create the feeling that the woman had it coming to her.  Pictures of nagging, reproachful, bitter termagants who turn domestic life into a hell on earth are painted before the jury.  Manhaters skilled in the art of cruelty are summoned up to haunt the trials of men pushed to their limits" and, in relation to rape, pp106-199; see also Sue Lees, Naggers, Whores and Libbers: Provoking Men to Kill in Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell  (eds.), Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, Buckingham, Open University Press, 1992, pp 267-88).

In reality, Foster was tormented by the knowledge of the impending loss of the accoutrements of his success; he was about to be stripped of his possessions by bailiffs and thereby face public humiliation.   Outward respectability conceals inner turmoil, yet by flashing his cash, Foster had turned his back on the prudence of his origins, the values of caution and "saving for a rainy day".  He was not born into privilege, his upward mobility achieved through intelligence/ingenuity.  The long-term forward planning held dear in his class of origin was jettisoned in favour of reckless spending.  His prodigious infidelity further marked his rejection of sensible, stolid middle-class values, to which his wife tenaciously clung, reverting to the "long-suffering, stand by your man" doormat/default mode required of her (if there had been the slightest hint of her having "deserved" her fate by petulantly threatening to walk out on him, or having sought refuge in the more appreciative arms of a rival these facts would have been endlessly pored over and the moral of the tragic tale would have been a cautionary one to women.  As Kate concludes, there is precious little by way of comfort to salvage for women readers: the conduct of Foster’s wife was irreproachable, she played according to the rules, yet still her life was snuffed out).

What we have then, is a chronicle of inflated pride and greed, an unremarkable rise-and-fall narrative with the twist of the credit crunch (hence the revival of the story now).  True, the financial turmoil was a long way off in the sunny days of summer, but Foster’s circumstances (living beyond one’s means, the spectre of ruin and disgrace, boom and bust on the markets mirrored in the case study of its fatal effects) give rise to the question Ronson implicitly addresses to the men in his audience (in spite of the article being carried in the Femail section): what would you have done in his shoes?  This is the reason why the victims are neglected.  They are irrelevant.  Foster is being portrayed as the real victim, their suffering is incidental, collateral damage, nothing more.

In a misplaced gesture of male solidarity, Ronson too apologises for the murderer: "The truth is, holding a gun does something to you.  It awakens in you some weird, dormant, fetishistic man-gene.  You feel alive and special.  You feel – as Homer Simpson once said – like God would feel if God were holding a gun".

To a greater or lesser extent all the male interviewees identify with Foster’s predicament, even the solution he resorted to.  What I find disturbing is the reaction of the members at the clay pigeon shooting club.  They steadfastly refuse to eject him from their company posthumously; they have refrained from branding him a "monster" or "pure evil". 

Ronson’s article does contain a critique of cultural stereotypes of masculine stoicism, the stiff upper lip of a bygone age.  Foster’s friend complains about the relentless pressures on the hapless males of today: "’We’re supposed to be manly,’ he replies.  ‘We’re not supposed to get upset.  We’re supposed to be the breadwinners and the providers, especially in our children’s eyes.  We’re supposed to do miracles’".  As Kate remarks, this is curiously out of date and certainly bears no relationship to what a feminist would expect.

To conclude, the subject matter of Ronson’s article is not the victims, but the Daily Mail readers themselves.  His mandate is to reassure them that they might not be as successful as the likes of Foster, but their loyalty to staunchly middle-class ideals renders them morally superior.  This virtuousness will enable them to weather the buffetings of the financial storm accordingly.  What we are conffronted with is a true Emperor’s new clothes scenario with more than a dash of Schadenfreude.  We may not be spectacularly wealthy, but contentment is to be found in the lore of our forefathers, bred into our bones.  Thrift, not the in-your-face ostentation of the show-off, is the route to genuine fulfillment.  There is no need to covet Foster’s vast array of material effects, no need to emulate him.  In this regard, Ronson is only too happy to swathe himself in the mantle of the readers’ representative: "I seemed too scruffy for these exclusive, nouveau riche surroundings, but it dawns on me that perhaps – like Letwin – the people of Maesbrook actually have nothing but overdrafts and all these fancy cars and mansions are just an illusion.  maybe, with my meagre savings, I’m the richest man in town".

Madness

By way of a preface to an excellent submission, allow me to cite Jane Ussher: "The concept of madness implicitly locates the problem within the individual who is sick, a contention strongly contested by the critics who would locate the sickness within the system, the society.  The discourse of madness serves to divert attention away from the problems within society, focusing attention on to the individual, who is suffering only as a direct result of societal pressures.  The symptoms labelled as part of the illness called madness are thus seen as a reflection of the inequalities and conflicts within society.  The mental health professionals disguise the reality of the misery experienced by individuals, and add to their oppression by providing individualised technological solutions for social problems" (Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness? Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, p148).

What is classified as a pathology may be no more than a sublimated response to an intolerable and (in the mind of the sufferer) inalterable reality: "The socialisation of women can be seen to prepare women for the mask of madness, the ‘desperate communication of the powerless’ [Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady, London, Virago, 1987, p5].  Having no legitimate outlet for feelings of frustration, anger and misery evoked by the reality of living in a patriarchal society, women fall into the psychiatric trap.  Madness in the twentieth century has become institutionalised as a discourse which legitimates the positioning of women as good/bad – attractive and seductive, dangerous and fearful.  The discourse, associated with the fear of women and the confining power of madness in the nineteenth century, has merely taken on a tougher veneer of respectability, as well as extending its authority to greater numbers of women.

Thus the labels applied to women, labels which so cleverly place the problem within her as a person, distracting from the social reality of her life, serve to mystify the reality of her oppression, a process buttressed by the gender bias in psychiatric nosology, the labelling process itself" (Ussher, op. cit., pp167-8).

Failure to conform to prevalent social standards of appropriate behaviour can exact a heavy price: "Although masculinity is associated with more positive mental health, it seems that this is only for men; and women who are adventurous, competitive, sexually active, independent, women who reject the role of wife and mother, to name but a few examples, may be at risk of being designated psychiatrically ill.  In fact, the woman who reports symptoms which are seen as ‘male’, such as alcohol abuse or aggressive antisocial behaviour, will be seen as much more psychologically disturbed than the man who exhibits the same symptoms" (Ussher, op. cit., p168).

Ussher neatly encapsulates my own doubts concerning therapy as a containment exercise, reconciling the patient to docile acceptance rather than looking to tackle the problems of systemic inequality and its invalidation of female protest: "In the feminist view, therapy is not gender-neutral.  It is based on patriarchal principles and supports a patriarchal and misogynistic culture.  The transformation of oppression into illness during the course of therapy is seen as rewriting women’s lives, women’s pain, within a framework which conceals misogynistic control of women, encouraging women to conform and be controlled.  The ‘helping professions’ are seen as agents who coerce women into accepting situations they do not want and that they are unhappy with.  The woman herself is taught to see her misery as illness, and to direct attention and cure at herself.  This means that women fail to look to factors outside themselves, factors outside their own madness, for explanations for unhappiness" (Ussher, op. cit., p176).

In Ussher’s sobering assessment, there is no magic bullet, no easy solution (pp292-3): "Psychiatrists might suggest that dopamine is deficient, that neural pathways are malfunctioning.  Psychologists might argue that women in distress are troubled by negative cognitions, making dysfunctional attributions which result in depression, or exhibiting learned helplessness.  A sociologist (or socially orientated psychologist) might argue that lack of social support and poor living conditions were of aetiological significance, and that the answer lies in social and political change.  The dissenters might argue that women, alongside men, are victims of a stigmatising labelling process, which function as a means of social control, pathologising behaviour which is defined unacceptable; that society is disposing of such people through the label of ‘mental illness’ and incarceration in the metaphorical strait-jacket of psychiatric categorisation or professionally mediated treatment.  A feminist might argue that women are victims of patriarchal oppression, of misogyny, and that madness is an understandable and natural reaction to the demeaning role enforced upon women, the protest of the powerless, or that labels of madness are merely tools of patriarchy and that our position as other within phallocentric discourse, makes us mad" (Ussher, op. cit., pp289-90).

Laurie Penny provides personal testimony of how these are not mere abstract debates, but have a devastating impact on ordinary lives in her moving and courageous Gender fucked: what does ‘healthy womanhood’ look like?

"When I was in a mental institution, a lot of otherwise well-meaning medical professionals conspired to screw up my gender identity pretty much permanently, for the best of reasons (they wanted to help me get better) and the worst (they believed that conforming to received ideas of ‘feminine’ behaviour was the best way for me to demonstrate a new, mentally healthy outlook).  They were wrong.  I am incredibly grateful for the inpatient treatment I received, which probably saved my life, but my political and personal feminism took a massive battering, and that’s less than entirely forgivable".

One woman’s "well-adjusted" is another woman’s "brainwashed": "Instead of analysing why we might be unwilling to go through the process of self-subsumation that represents the western journey into ‘womanhood’, the doctors prescribed a strict programme of feminisation for me.  I was told in no uncertain terms to grow out my hair, throw away my old baggy black clothes, start wearing skirts, pretty shoes and make-up, sit with my knees together and be less ballsy and confrontational.  The other women on my ward, with nothing to do all day, were only too happy to dress me up like a tiny mannequin, teaching me to paint my face and nails and lending me foofy dresses until I was allowed off the ward to buy my own.

Pretty soon, as a day patient, I was getting regular compliments from leery men on the Tube about my nice pink low-cut tops and nice tights and nice impression of absolute submission.  This represented progress, my doctors told me.  Wolf-whistles were something I should be proud of.  I was nearly at my target weight: the attention of men in public places, wanted or unwanted, was proof that I was nearly ready to return to normal society as a ‘proper grown-up lady’".

Culture 

KT Dodge of the eponymous blog informs us that Ratings drop since John Sergeant exit.  Although for me Strictly Come Dancing is the perfect cure for insomnia, even I could not help but notice the controversy concerning his departure and I certainly agree with the author that the panel of judges could benefit from lightening up.

Chris Partridge of the ever-informative and delightful Ornamental Passions enlightens us as to the personages gracing the facades of the College of Preceptors in 2 Bloomsbury Square, WC1.

With his unfailing aptitude for providing us with the solace of nostalgia in an unkind world, Jonathan Calder of Liberal England looks back over the career of one of Britain’s finest broadcasters, In praise of Brian Matthew.

Natalie Bennett of My London, Your London, an indispensable guide to the exhibitions and events which often fills the ex-pat (I know, I have only myself to blame for my self-imposed exile, plus the total absence of well-paid jobs for my particular skills in my native tracts) with homesick melancholy and a more than slight twinge of envy at the sheer abundance of entertainments on offer, reassures me that not every production is equally worth watching in Theatre Review: The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes by the RSC at the Wilton Music Hall: "But there was a wise warning from the Bard that the playwright here, Adriano Shaplin, forgot: ‘the play’s the thing’.  In telling the story of the struggle between the ‘traditional’ philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his rival ‘natural philosophers’ of the Royal Society, particularly of the brilliant but erratic Robert Hooke (and this play might better have been called Hooke’s tragedy), against the detailed background of the political and practical history of the time, Shaplin apparently forgot that this wasn’t a school lesson".

Guest-blogging at Heresy Corner, the magnificently-pseudonymed Valdemar Squelch (I agree that Dave, his real name, doesn’t have quite the same ring to it), provides the uninitiated with an excellent and thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the fiction of Montague Rhodes James in The Hairy Claws of the Vengeful Dead, placing the stories within the wider cultural context: "James could hardly have been unaware of the prolonged intellectual ferment that followed the publication of Darwin’s ideas.  The great debate spanned the early decades of James’ life.  As a Christian by upbringing and inclination, M.R. James believed in the immortal soul.  Yet as a man of his time – and a very intelligent one – he could not have been untouched (untainted?) by the materialistic outlook of the new science of biology.  Disraeli said the question was whether Man was an Ape or an Angel and famously came down ‘on the side of the Angels’.  James does not seem so sure, in his fiction at least.  he offers us spirits that are bestial, yet still in a horrible way human – human enough to be dangerous, with just enough mind to nurse a grievance".

Hopefully, this week’s compendium will have sufficed to silence the detractors of blogging, albeit temporarily, about the merits of our output.

I include one final nomination by way of demonstrating that I take my duty of strict adherence to the principle of inclusiveness as a host seriously.  I am not sure whether this site is touting cycling equipment or dodgy gurus (as an atheist I am not discriminating against cults, rejecting all superstition with equal fervour) and am not remotely convinced that it is a genuine blog, as it has the look of an elaborate marketing ploy, but the Cycling Photos of the Year are innocuous enough in themselves.  I leave it to your discernment, this was just the public health warning.

Next week’s Roundup will be hosted by Mr Eugenides.  As ever, nominations should be sent to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.  A full statement of editorial policy and the hosting rota may be found at the Britblog Central website.

Having comprehensively botched up Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars by failing to hold an open beta test and clamouring to release a half-finished product (no doubt haunted by the spectre of when Starcraft II might be expected to hit the shelves) to eager fans who were left frustrated and disappointed (ultimately there are only about three tactics per side that almost always guarantee victory and if you do not use them or know how to counter them, you may as well not bother with the game). EA could not afford to make a similar mistake with the other venerable title of fond memory from its back catalogue and, sure enough, did their best to rectify the balance issues by allowing a very broad audience to put it through its paces.

My personal pre-ordered copy arrived three days after release, by which time my regular gaming partner has already warned me that three patches had been released. This filled me with a sense of foreboding (especially after having joined the beta in the closing stages and being comprehensively rushed to the extent that I was not even permitted enough time to figure out the optimum build order), but I am pleased and relieved to report that employing the wisdom of crowds and the obsessive ingenuity of the fans has proven more then worthwhile and the lobbies, so depressingly empty on C and C 3 and Kane’s Wrath, are overflowing with combatants again.

The previous instalment was weird, wacky and wonderful and the mixture of bizarre units, time-bending plot and amusingly over-the-top acting has been lovingly preserved. With the Soviet Union on the brink of extinction, Cherdenko (Tim Curry) and General Krukov (Andrew Divoff) travel deep into the bowels of the Kremlin to a secret laboratory where Dr Gregor Zelinsky (Peter Stormare) has been experimenting with time travel. Strapping themselves into the prototype machine, they transport themselves to the Fifth Solvay Conference in Brussels in 1927 (an actual historical event) where Einstein is lecturing. As the Professor leaves the stage, the evil Cherdenko offers him his hand in congratulation (Zelinsky having instructed the General not to touch anything for fear of irrevocably altering the time line with unforeseen consequences), which Einstein graciously accepts, only to be electrocuted. Safely back in the future, Cherdenko discovers that he is now Premier and that the objective of denying the Allies their world-beating technological edge by having deprived them of Einstein’s expertise has proven a success. However, they grossly underestimated the Butterfly Effect and their meddling has unleashed a new enemy in the East, the Empire of the Rising Sun.

The live-action video inserts between campaign missions have long been a distinguishing feature of the Command and Conquer series, and on this occasion, the producers have surpassed themselves, assembling the most impressive cast in the history of the genre, with the likes of George Takei as Emperor Yoshiro and Jonathan Pryce as Field Marshal Robert Bingham. Approximately an hour of footage was shot for the game in the superb quality digital that we could only dream of in the early days with a heavily pixellated General Carville. The rivalry between Tanya and Lieutenant Eva has been revived as they vie for the Commander’s attentions and affections and the cast throw themselves into their respective roles with enthusiasm.

The pace of the game is slightly slower than C and C 3 (no bad thing) and sending in a force of only one type of unit (characteristic of the latter) doomed to failure. Each side has a slightly different way of building. The Allies are the most traditional in their construction methods with a fixed build radius, which does not expand as other structures are placed. In order to spread out further, you have to purchase an extra Prospector (ore collector) from the Refinery, send it to the area in question and deploy it. Any structures within its build radius come directly under its influence and the Command Hub itself must be upgraded for nearby Boot Camps and so on to access the higher levels of technology. If you are running low on credits, it is not a good idea to sell the Hub unless the position is well-defended and you are quite sure that you do not wish to maintain a subsidiary base as a fall-back in case everything goes pear-shaped at HQ, as it means that you cannot erect any more buildings in the vicinity. The alternative for a second build queue is to purchase another MCV (comparatively expensive at 5k a pop as opposed to 1.4k for a Prospector). In general, particularly early on, money will be tight, capturing neutral oil derricks well worth the effort.

The Soviets spread out across the map as they so desire, each new construction project laying claim to slightly more space (wooden fencing papered with propaganda posters and the sound of muscular Stakhanovites singing the Party’s praises in the background accompanying each new milestone in the Building of Socialism), but for more serious annexations, the Sputnik is required. The Crusher Crane (reminiscent of Yuri’s evil Grinder in that it too can recycle vehicles for a quick-fix cash boost, studded with ominous protruding spikes that would give a frisson of anticipatory pleasure to the confirmed submissive) is the only structure in the game which provides a secondary build queue with all the advantages and target vulnerabilities such a facility implies.

In its all-encompassing ambition, the Empire of the Rising Sun are not bound by such constraints, every structure emerging in high-tech splendour from a custom Core, mobility at a premium.

The ideologies which each side hold dear and which they ceaselessly profess as the source of their strength and superiority are reflected in their units. Old favourites, such as the Kirov Airship and the multi-purpose IFV are joined by worthy new stable mates like the Bullfrog with its unique passenger ejection system the Hlopushka man-cannon that catapults wrestling-costumed War Bears and raw recruit Conscripts alike for a parachuted soft landing.

The Allies place their faith in capitalist investment and research sophistication even without the assistance of the wild-haired refugee from persecution, the developers evidently having a soft spot for 1960s Irwin Allen-style science-fiction, a prime example of which is the Cryocopter, which, as its name suggests, freezes targets, allowing the humblest of foot soldiers (the Peacekeeper) to dispatch a mighty Apocalypse Tank with a single shot of his rifle, in a true David and Goliath role reversal. Switching to the aircraft’s special ability, the S.H.R.I.N.K. ray cuts the enemy down to size, with squeaky little voices to match, a bit like early Madonna on helium…(or perhaps an emasculated post-divorce Guy Ritchie).

The Soviets have always extolled the virtues of honest toil, relying on the brawn of their iron-willed proletariat with their long-suffering endurance of blatant state exploitation. Their anti-infantry Sickle may teeter precariously on spindly legs, but its industrial efficiency in mowing down opponents makes it a formidable foe nevertheless. And Tesla technology has taken to the waves in the shape of the Stingray (which, if need be, can also clamber ashore for back-up).

Confident in their unrivalled technological mastery, the Rising Sun are the most innovative and versatile with vehicles that instantaneously metamorphose from ground to air (the design team members were probably weaned on Transformers), such as the Striker-VX/Chopper-VX, or for sheer brute force King Oni where what you see is what you get, a mechanoid in full samurai armour with laser blaster eyes (in his case, looks definitely can kill!).

Every unit possesses special abilities, none of which are negligible, from the stun bark of the Attack Dog to the Ramming Speed shield of the Shogun battleship. In the thick of the conflict, the more your forces take a pounding, the faster you accumulate points granting access to Top Secret Protocols and support abilities, such as the Orbital Dump, which brings the charred wreckage of a post-re-entry Soyuz space-station hurtling down into the middle of the enemy’s base. The sheer variety of units and the correspondingly broad range of possibilities for combining assault groups make for a richer and more satisfying gaming experience than in C and C 3. In short, the greater complexity means that you actually have to put some thought into securing a victory rather than monotonous OCD-like repetition of a set sure-fire win tactic.

The graphics are gorgeous, if slightly cartoon-like, even when not on Ultra High setting. When the Kirov finally has the grin wiped off its blimpish visage, the flames peel back its skin to expose its steel skeleton before it is transformed into a fireball in a display the Hindenburg Disaster Re-Enactment Society would be proud of. Attention to detail and humour are also evident in the cityscapes. In Heidelberg, for example, an unlikely fountain attests to the fabled German love of beer, with an architecturally incongruous centrepiece in full Lederhosen gear revolving slowly on a plinth, pouring gallons of the intoxicant out of a glass.

The music represent a perfect complement to the on-screen action, with three quite different scores for each of the warring opponents, with shades of a homage to the 60s TV series for the Allied breaking out into hard rock, suitably bombastic military marches for the parade of the arsenal on Red Square whilst delicate flutes alternate with synthesiser raunch for the Rising Sun.

The campaign can be played in either Single Player or Co-Operative mode online. When playing without the benefit of a human partner, the computer pairs you up with a series of AI Co-Commanders, such as the oleaginous public schoolboy Giles Price, to whom you can issue certain orders to back up your strategies. You can request that your computer ally strike a designated target, occupy a position and plan an attack. This constitutes an innovation compared to previous Command and Conquer instalments and can prove very useful in sticky situations.

Another improvement is the ability in Multiplayer Online to chat to whomever you choose in the Staging Rooms via VOIP, which staves off boredom during protracted waiting stints. You can mute any player prior to the game launch, but this does not protect you from being bombarded by insults in typed text form, which I regard as a defect. Mute should mean what it suggests: silencing your enemy completely (you know how nasty things can get, particularly when your opponent is about as mature as the spots sprinkled liberally over his hormonally-challenged face). It can also be slightly laborious to switch opponents off manually each time they peek into the room. It would have been better to provide a default Chat to Allies Only box to tick, which would have saved you the hassle.

Similarly, I do not appreciate the new approach to the online lobbies, whereby chat and game joining are rigorously separated. This necessitates a great deal of extraneous clicking on the Communications Star in the top right corner. Perhaps I am a traditionalist, but it actually makes it harder for you to locate your friends and gaming partners and accept their invitations (that you will not be aware of unless you enter the specific Invitations screen).

In summary, Red Alert 3 represents a long overdue and welcome return to form, with rewarding gameplay, an implicit acknowledgement of the benefits of avoiding a rush job and of involving the loyal community of diehard fans, who, although we have too often been treated very shabbily by EA in the past (putting profit before server stability, to name but one example) have stuck with the franchise through thick and thin. Let the experience be a salutary admonition to you EA: without us, you are nothing.

Gameplay 9.0

Graphics 10

Soundtrack 9.5

Fun Factor 9.0

Overall Rating: 9.8

[This is the version of the review as published in PC Dome.  The detailed version follows]