Hagley Road To Ladywood

This Must Be The Place

2012-02-26T16:03:00.004Z

Impenetrably arty, or just a load of nothingness?

What is it with arty film directors?

It makes you wonder if their default way of operating consists in shooting their film first, followed by sessions with arty mates and colleagues looking for conceated ways of coating their product in a load of wierdness and randomness.

And at the end of it, do they talk to each other about things like "metaphysical hyperrealism" so that they can feel sophisticated?

Contempt for the ordinary viewer, however, is certainly something they fail to take into account.

Blatantly so in the case of This Must Be The Place, directed by Paolo Sorrentino and one of the winners, god knows how, at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

The film is double frustrating for a number of reasons.

Sean Penn's amazing acting feels wasted, for starters. Perfect in his portrayal of retired (and bored) goth rockstar Cheyenne (looks modelled after The Cure's Robert Smith, one of this blog's heroes), Penn confirms his talent for versatility. Pity that he's wallowing in a sea of nothingness here.

And that's because the story plot is so weak that it comes crumbling down the moment it's apparent that the film is about very little was it not for a lot of beautiful photography, cultivated shots and intriguing landscapes.

Other than that, it's like trying to bake a cake with water being the only ingredient.

They could have expanded on Cheyenne's relationship with his estranged parents, or anything about his past, or present, or even future, or any of the side characters that are churned out every five minutes and then kicked into oblivion for no apparent reason.

Instead the plot errs from handing David Byrne a bit of self publicity, to bits and pieces about a local lady mourning her missing son, or even Cheyenne's mate going on about his sexual prowess.

Until, 50 minutes into it, an improbable stab at hunting Nazi war criminals becomes - but not too much - the purpose of the film.

And if that wasn't random enough, there's two-a-penny unconnected references to anything from wheeled suitcases, to ping pong, to blokes jumping into your car asking for a lift only to get dropped off thirty seconds later. Of course, for no apparent reason, aside from showing a stunning shot of the New Mexico desert. Camera held diagonally, of course.

Now, no doubt this blog's being ignorant. No doubt, director Paolo Sorrentino and whoever co-wrote the script had in mind some grand reference to the alienation of the globalised world or other self-aggrandizing coincidental double meaning.

And we're all up for a load of substance. But when you have to practically give yourself a brain transplant to try and grasp what a film is on about, then it's quite obvious something doesn't add up.

In short, very disappointing.

Cliches of 2012 #1

2012-02-25T13:51:00.001Z

"Labour failed to regulate the banks"

You hear it whenever Tories open their gob to comment on one of the most odious side effects of the financial crisis: that is, bankers' bonuses and pisstake-like pay and share packages.

"Labour failed to regulate the banks", they shout, like a broken record.

And, yes, no-one disputes that: indeed Labour failed to regulate the banks.

But here's the thing, Tories. You're about to enter your third year in power, so just stop moaning and do something about it.

Except that you won't. You won't because you don't think they should be regulated in the slightest, but you don't have the guts to openly say it.

More, you actually cheered when Labour failed to regulate the banks. You approved of it, which is why you never said a word about it throughout the decades of binge or around the time Baron Mandelson was gobbing off that the filthy rich excited him.

Do you really think, Tories, that the British public are so stupid to believe that you wouldn't have batted an eyelid if Labour had done what they should have during their tenure in government?

Isn't it more likely that even the most feeble attempt at regulating would have been met by the usual hysterical kicking and screaming about "socialism", "loonie lefties" and the rest?

After all, guess who it was who deregulated them in the first place? That's right, the Tories (see here).

Because that's what you do for a living. You champion policies that favour the super-rich and your job is to sugar coat them in populism, smokescreens and a lot of cheek.

So just know, Tories, that when you produce outrage from one orifice, but then mumble from the other that bankers' bonuses are necessary (like Tory minister Ed Vaizey did on last Thursday's BBC Question Time), the picture that comes out is a pathetic one.

Super 8

2012-02-22T08:44:00.001Z

An evening you won't get back.

If you succumb to the idea of watching Super 8 on the grounds that it was directed by the same bloke behind both Lost and Cloverfield, J.J. Abrams, and that it was produced by Steven Spielberg too, remember it's an evening of your life you will never get back.

And it's a mild shame because the nostalgia theme in Super 8 is done with taste, the premises are interesting (a bunch of kids turning unwitting witnesses to a mysterious train crash) and there are also some endearing comical moments.

Until, that is, that so-very-American irresistible temptation for grand special effects done in the style of dick measuring kicks in, and it's suddenly like Spielberg and Abrams decided to do some self-parody.

Cue aliens, monsters and giant-insects-cum-octopuses building a supergalactic spaceship while everybody stares with their finger pointed and a falling star too manages to get into the picture courtesy of some good timing.

However, don't take our word for it.

You may fancy watching an unfeasible adventure consisting of ET cross with War of the Worlds for primary school kids with a sprinkle of Stand by Me or any Stephen King-inspired stuff after he got into multiple-eyed monsters turning into walking spiders disguised as the sheriff... In which case, Super 8 will be most enjoyable.

Grayling the job snob

2012-02-21T15:54:00.004Z

So Chris Grayling, the Tory (Un)employment minister is now officially on record saying that those criticising multi-billion companies like Tesco for milking free labour at the expense of the taxpayer are actually "job snobs".

Except that goes to show that the undisputed "job snobs" are actually warped Tory minds a-la Chris Grayling himself, IDS or their colleagues in the government, given that they quite clearly believe that those jobs are so shit and those workers are so shit that they don’t even deserve to be paid at minimum wage rates.

Contagion

2012-02-20T02:39:00.000Z

The best hypochondriac film since Cassandra Crossing.

They say that the mark of a good film is when it still affects you days after watching it.

In which case, just hope you don't sneeze, or cough, or that your legs don't itch, or that you don't get a mouth ulcer, not even one, in the week after you watch Contagion.

And that's because we're talking here Hollywood's contribution to hypochondria to a scale that not even the makers of the Daily Mail and their infamous SORE THROAT headline could possibly begin to comprehend.

Except that, unlike the ugly Mail, Contagion is beautifully done, with each of its subplots so involving that it really will pin you to your seat, kleenex in hand, from start to finish.

A combination of director Steven Soderbergh's skilfully minimalistic work as well as some top quality acting from a star-studded cast including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Gwyneth Paltrow will seriously make you believe that that dick of a bloke coughing right on your face on the bus may have just kickstarted the biggest outbreak of meningoencephalitic virus known to man. And bat.

A must see.

Sainsbury's, not Tesco

2012-02-19T19:30:00.000Z

Don't let anyone say that consumer choice is dead.

Oh the beauty of British consumer society.

If the government don't want to listen, because they know better anyway (even though most of the cabinet never did any proper work like most mortals have to), at least it's great that mild consumer pressure was enough to get Waterstones, TK Maxx and Sainsbury's to withdraw from the Tory government's "Workfare" scheme.

Lest you forget, the "Workfare" scheme consists in allowing a free-of-charge taxpayer-funded supply of staff to multi-billion pounds companies in the name of free market.

In other words, those who lost their job are penalised twice.

One, by paying national insurance for decades to help them out against potential future redundancies.

Two - now - thanks to this inept government, by forcing them to work for the benefit of a company that made "pre-tax half-year profits of £1.9billion in 2011".

Which takes us to Tesco. A place where this blog was hardly shopping anyway because we always thought that Sainsbury's looks less shoddy and their marketing is a touch less aggressive (and their logo matches the colour of this blog, which is no mean feat) .

But if there was the odd occasion when we couldn't be arsed to walk the long way for a carton of milk and Tesco in Five Ways was the quickest option, now no chance.

And by the look of it, tens of thousands of customers are ready to do the same. Don't let anyone say that consumer choice is dead.

Every little helps, right?

Why employment reforms in Spain are a warning for workers all over Europe

2012-02-18T14:49:00.021Z

Depressing salaries, free dismissals and other gems: Spain's right-wing solution to the economic crisis.

The Spanish trade unions have labelled it "the harshest and most aggressive employment legislation [of the post-Franco era]".

Opposition parties are already planning to appeal to the country's highest judicial body, Tribunal Constitucional, on the grounds that it may be in breach of the most basic rights.

No-one can deny that Spain's new labour reforms, announced last week by the new arch-conservative government led by Mariano Rajoy (photo), are causing a political stir that is threatening to shake the country's foundations.

The background is that a combination of Spain's scary unemployment rate (just under 23%, the highest in the Eurozone) and the country's worst economic crisis in generations, handed the centre-right People's Party a landslide victory in last November's election.

And while everyone agreed that measures had to be taken, it now looks like the priority is simply a massive raid against workers' rights - the same rights that didn't stop the country from creating more than half of all the new jobs in the EU in the period 2000-2006.

Indeed, when People's Party leader Rajoy was asked to explain his plans during the election campaign, he repeated that he would "never" attack workers' rights or "make it cheaper to fire workers". He even posted a Twitter message to ram the point home.

Yet, a mere 55 days later, the total opposite has happened.

This should concern workers all over Europe, because the "Rajoy method" may inspire right-wing governments and rampant "free marketeers" in other countries too.

Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Companies can now unilaterally impose a pay cut.

While this is still illegal in Britain, on the grounds that it would amount to a breach of contract under the Employment Rights Act 1996, for the first time since 1889 the new Spanish law will now allow bosses to "modify" their staff's salary without agreement.

This can be applied collectively or to specific members of staff and - check this out - the new law states that this can be done simply "if there are proven economic, technical, organisational or productive reasons", which is extremely ambiguous and is an open door to abuse.

For instance, a company now needs to quote losses (any losses, it doesn't matter how much) over two consecutive quarters in order to slash their staff's wages until further notice and nearly as much as they like, even if the following quarter brings about record profits.

The only constraints are that they're required to notify it at least 15 days in advance and that they can't go under the statutory minimum wage, which in Spain is €641 per month.

2. Employers can unilaterally modify their staff's working hours or even tasks as decribed in the contract.

Again, all they need to do is tell the hapless worker 15 days in advance citing the above-mentioned catch-all "economic, technical, organisational or productive reasons". If the employee doesn't like his new timetable, let alone new "duties and responsibilities", all he needs to do is grab his coat and hope for the following point.

3. Firing workers is now up to 71,5% cheaper than until the other day.

Admittedly, Spain had one of the most expensive payout packages in Europe (45 days per year worked up to a maximum of 3 and 1/2 years). This was often branded the reason for the country's endemic use of casual and temporary contracts, often the easiest way to sidestep legal restrictions.

However, in one fell swoop, workers will now be entitled to 20 days per year of service, up to a maximum of one year - that is almost three quarters cheaper than it used to be.

4. Back pay is abolished.

If a dismissal is deemed "unfair" by a judge, the company will only have to fork out a payout and no longer the so-called "back pay" (which is the salaries corresponding to a worker between the time he was dismissed and the time a favourable award is obtained from an employment tribunal).

5. Probationary periods are now extended to one year.

While Rajoy's ministers keep mouthing off that the new reform is an incentive for bosses to offer "permanent contracts", critics point out that these are only "permanent" in name.

And that's because trial periods are now also doubled from 6 months to one year.

That is to say, for one full year, an employee can have their contract terminated for no reason and with no right to notice or payout. Note that pregnant women too, until the other day covered by protection against "unfair dismissal", can now be sacked absolutely free during the first 12 months.

Which is why the new "permanent contract" Rajoy-style hands the worker even less protection than the old "temporary" one (which at least included the right to a payout of 8 days per year worked).

As for employees in the UK, we can only hope that at least some of Rajoy's measures are blocked by the Constitutional Court, or that their predictably depressing effect on the Spanish economy (mass salary cuts are already under way) will be enough to put off our own government.

The Descendants

2012-02-12T11:20:00.001Z

George Clooney's performance of a lifetime.

One of the main contenders at the forthcoming Academy Awards is the excellent The Descendants.

In common with his former films (About Schmidt, Sideways), Alexander Payne's The Descendants shares the same reflective mood, serene pace and a contagious, almost 'old school'-like, eye for character development.

But the biggest bonus here is George Clooney's stunning performance.

Nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars, Clooney smoothly impersonates Matt King, a wealthy family-trust administrator and practising laywer on a Hawaiian island.

King is grappling with a few demons, chiefly the fact that his wife Elizabeth is laying comatose in a hospital following a boat accident. He's now going to look after two daughters that he barely knows how to handle. Plus, if things weren't complicated enough, he finds out that, right before the time of her accident, his wife was having a full-blown affair.

Caught between a major family crisis and emotional turmoil, King decides to confront his wife's lover, a successful real estate broker (Matther Lillard, the murderer from Scream).

This in turn will kickstart a rollercoaster of emotions and assorted mess which will result in one of the most endearing dark comedy dramas of the year - and any further is bound to be tantamount to blatant spoilers.

Quite simply, excellent.

We Need To Talk About Kevin

2012-02-11T13:33:00.002Z

Are some people simply born with sociopathic tendencies?

Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of the 2003 novel of the same name is one of the most disturbing films you'll ever get a chance to see.

To put it bluntly, don't watch it if you feel you're already losing hope about the state of humanity, or if you are more than a touch puzzled by the ongoing normalisation of nastiness across all levels of society (the pathetic sociopaths behind Unilad being the latest recruits).

And that's because, pouring fresh blood (literally) in the century-long debate about nature vs nurture, We Need To Talk About Kevin is a frighteningly poignant depiction of what happens when somebody is born completely devoid of empathy and humanity.

For all the protestations that it's the environment that shapes you, that unloving or dysfunctional parents are bound to have an impact, that good education improves your chances of smoothing out deranged tendencies, and so on -and all of the above most certainly counts - some people are just born evil.

And this evil little shit, Kevin, Tilda Swinton's creepy son in one of the most compelling films that came out in 2011, is testament to that.

Yet, even more disturbing than the movie itself are some of the comments accompanying the review on IMDb.

According to some, the fact that Kevin's birth was unplanned, or that Tilda Swinton's character didn't insist on seeking medical help earlier on, or that she was a bit cold and disdainful, are all supposed to be the crucial factors behind this younger and more manipulative version of Patrick Bateman turning into a serial killer.

Except that, if you follow that line of thought, then you'll be able to justify the most heinous of crimes. Especially given that probably less than 0.01% of the world's population has the privilege of a perfect ubpringing (and what is "the perfect upbringing" anyway).

Most kids don't get enough cuddles and some get too many. Some people may have absent fathers or messed-up mothers, some the other way round, some both and some neither.

Yet, thankfully, the greatest majority of us don't live an existence solely aimed at being horrible to other people without harbouring even a shred of empathy at the most basic human level.

All of which proves what an amazingly stimulating film We Need To Talk About Kevin is. The subject-matter may explore the darkest realms of the human psyche, but a combination of fantastic acting (Swinton could easily have been nominated for an Oscar) and genius plot structure will most certainly leave you still thinking about it for days.

Which, ultimately, is always the sign of a good film.

Communism, British style

2012-02-10T00:16:00.000Z

Who said that old Soviet-style policies were dead and buried?

Far from common belief, by the look of things Stalin and their mates got almost everything right, as state intervention and soviet-style policies seem to be all the rage again.

Sod the free market and the idea that "big government" should refrain from stepping in.

Remember the old criticism that workers in the old Eastern bloc were paid for doing FA and that there was no incentive to productivity?

Well, we've got that galore again. Except, here, now, in Britain. For the very few.

Look at the humongous salaries and bonuses dished out at the top, no matter whether profits or losses are made. Mama Government will be there to cover their backside, no matter what, which is why Barclays can afford to announce a drop in profits and still shower executives with bonuses and payouts the equivalent of a small nation's GDP (see here, here, and here for details).

But socialism for the rich also comes in the guise of subsidised work for the nation's supermarkets. Just like the old Konsum chain in the ex-DDR, the state is also making sure that subsidised staff (or "correctional labour", as the old USSR used to brand it) are readily provided.

Take a butchers at our very own Tesco, Asda, Poundland and other multi-billion making corporations. Why should they risk recruiting staff on the market, if they can fill their boots with state-subsidised workers who will readily stack their shelves for free (the exception of course, being the greedy pro-free marketeers at Waterstones, who recently dared to declare that the state should not interfere with recruitment policies).

And if you thought that was enough, the British state is now also steamrollering into old people's private lives.

Taking a leaf out of communist Romania, where Nicolae Ceauşescu forced 70,000 men and women to leave their homes and work in the mines, our own Chairman of the Central Committee of Great Britain, Comrade David Cameron, is pushing for old people to move out of their homes and into smaller places. Not only that, he also knows better than anyone and he thinks the government should nudge them into work well into their seventies - lest they feel lonely.

Like the Telegraph reported yesterday, the "government is accused of 'social engineering' over plans to make the elderly move out of their homes".

Sixty years from his death, Stalin must be smiling his head off. His policies crossed not just the iron curtain, but the channel too.

The Skin I Live In

2012-01-30T07:37:00.002Z

Pedro Almodóvar's latest must-see is one of the best films of 2011.

The last ten years have seen Spain reaffirming itself as the most productive breeding ground for top quality cinema.

Álex de la Iglesia (La Habitacion del Niño), Guillem Morales (Los Ojos de Julia), Jaume Balagueró (REC, Fragile), Rodrigo Cortés (Buried) and Juan Antonio Bayona (The Orphanage) are only a handful of directors typifying Spain's current cinematic run of form.

And that's without counting, of course, one of country's most celebrated film-makers, Pedro Almodóvar (of Volver fame), whose latest film The Skin I Live In (original title La Piel Que Habito) is one of his most remarkable ever.

Put bluntly, Almodóvar's films are generally weird. But I mean good and watchable weird. Never pretentious or self-indulgent, let alone overly arty and elitist, which is this blog's pet hate. You can watch almost every Almodóvar film and expect the seediness and the various quirks along the way to finally make sense at some point.

By the time you've spotted the twist coming or have clocked it altogether, the story will have drawn you in so much that you'll simply want to find out how or why right until the very end.

Given how rich and carefully textured the plot is, there's not much we can reveal about The Skin I Live In. Even the slightest clue may easily turn into the most irritating of spoilers.

The film is in one go horror, psychological thriller, crime, film noir, and distorted love melodrama as well. All the while, underlying ethical questions are posed over the extent to which Frankenstein-like medicine can go.

But, while most directors would have lost the plot trying to juggle too many genres at the same time, Almodóvar pulls it off handsomely.

His rich colours and obsessive themes are not, unlike many other directors, cheap gimmicks, fillers or clever tricks. They are integral part of his narrative.

The film is also the moment when Antonio Banderas, one of Spain's most famous actors, reaffirms his acting credentials. Often slammed as wooden, here he's absolutely superb, oozing mystery and charisma and carrying the whole weight of the film from start to finish.

Watch The Skin I Live In and you'll lose yourself into its slow but intense pace and into its intriguing and relentless buildup, while the different ends of the same web gradually come together against a backdrop that is both creepy and fascinating at the same time.

The Rite

2012-01-29T13:11:00.000Z

Add a 't' in front of the title and you get the general idea.

How many films can be made about exorcists and possessed women (and why is it always the women, by the way, have you noticed...?) swearing in several languages before people realise that it's totally useless?

How many times, before producers actually decide to pack it in and focus their attention and cash elsewhere? The troubled, sceptical priest under the guidance of an older, wiser maverick. The mandatory car accident. The chained sweaty woman telling them both to fuck off. In Latin too. The cross and the prayers, the spitting and the red eyes, the premonitions, the insects and the lot...

This one here comes about 35 years too late, as it would only matter to those few souls who never watched The Exorcist and its multiple spin offs and rip offs.

If there's one thing the makers of The Rite got almost 100% right, that was the film title. They forgot to add the letter 't' in front of "Rite". Then it would have made sense, Anthony Hopkins or not.

Vanishing on 7th Street

2012-01-28T11:32:00.004Z

When the apocalypse is so dull that you can't wait for it to come.

There's an unwritten rule in cinema, etched in capital letters, as old as the first reel to reel.

And it goes as follows. The fact that a director may have been behind a decent film and the fact that a story plot may also sound vaguely intriguing are no guarantee of a good film.

Brad Anderson may have been the man behind both Session 9 and The Machinist, and his latest Vanishing on 7th Street may also sound like your perfect so-called "post-apocalyptic" story. Unfortunately though, it's painfully weak as well as way too flimsy and badly acted to actually go anywhere.

For all the amount of semi-deserted, mysterious-looking and Twin Peak-esque scenes set in an old neon-lit bar, the plot is simply too feeble and anemic (yes, thanks thesaurus) to strike any chord with the viewer.

Not to mention that Hayden Christensen and the other actors are so wooden that, put next to Pinocchio, they would positively make him look like Plastic Man.

Which wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that character development is below zero.

The thrills evaporate after about fifteen minutes as you quickly realise that a single episode of the Teletubbies will carry more suspense than this pap.

What seem to be the only four survivors to a mysterious plague that snatches people away, are just sitting there, fiddling with ice cubes and fuel, and periodically wailing that they have lost their kid/mum/colleagues/ex wife.

That's all they seem to be saying. And after you've heard the same lines 7 times in a row you just start hoping for the entity to put the inept four out of their misery once and for all.

As for the apocalypse, it must be the most docile one to be ever conjured up by a cinematic mind.

The same monstrous thing that hits people in an instant in the first part of the film, is later on so slow that even a snail would crawl back to safety once they twig that they're about to be snatched.

Vanishing on 7th Street is like a fantastic initial idea that crashed into the worst of writer's blocks within ten minutes.

Which, given how crowded the post-apocalyptic genre is starting to look, makes this film even more redundant.

Facebook statuses debunked*

2012-01-07T16:38:00.011Z

Type one- Bored shitless

- "Enjoying the evening at home with a candle. Nice to have some chillout time!...xxx"
- "Had lovely day in the garden. Wonderful............."

So painful that you can actually feel their boredom. Such nothingness rammed down their Facebook friends' throats on a half hourly basis is only parallel to their stunted social skills.

Type two- Reaction seeker

- "Omg...Worst travelling experience ever. Stuck in traffic for 5 hours :-(...."
- "I love my family and friends VERY VERY much. You know who you are and you are very special people...."

Saddos in this category are obviously motivated by instant online gratification. Also, they're clearly gagging for replies which will inevitably consist of a flurry of "awwww" or "u alright hunni?xxx" in the first instance and "awww bless you" and "love u2 babes, u r sooo special to me 2 xxxx" for the second.

Type three- Attention seeker

- "........Wish it had never happened.....:-( "
- ".......Thanks XYZ for making me very happy......."

The above statuses are obviously an attempt to compensate lack of attention/affection during childhood. And sure enough, various Facebook friends will deliver the goods with a battery of "why?what happened????" or "...wow...what did XYZ do?..."

Type four- Spamming musician

- "Playing solo 2moro at the Bull & Gate supporting XYZ. Free entry!!!!!Get there early!!!!"
- "[my band] at [venue] tomorrow at 9pm.....Come and see us!!!!Club night to follow!"

This is the type of chap who'd invite you to gigs even if it's 600 miles away from where you live. No wonder their statuses tend to remain woefully ignored. Not afraid to constantly spam everyone on their "friends" list, 90 per cent of their social interaction consists of generally talking AT people about their band and, of course, "come to my gig next Friday".

Type five- Look at my baby

- "Little Jaden won't stop playin up. Cant get any sleep!!!!"
- "Cant believe my princess is 3 months today. Love u xxxxxxx"

Normally women, these have a tendency to change one part of their moniker to accomodate words like "proud mummy" or "happy mummy". Also, they're totally oblivous to how annoying they are with their relentless bombardment of trivial anecdotes of their little ones enjoying their new toys. As if anybody else gave a flying fuck. Not to mention the onslaught of their kids' photos. This type tend to be particularly unbearable round Christmas time.

Type six - The proto ironic one-liner

- "If the mayans were so good at predicting the future they'd still be here"
- "theres a guy in kings heath who puts a monkey in a pushchair"

These people (generally blokes) usually spend around ten to fifteen minutes conjuring up the wittiest possible contribution. They love to be thought of as witty, funny and hilarious, even though they aren't. Often twistedly double ironic and cryptic, they're also known for their penchant for posting bizarre pictures and plays on words. As long as it nets them comments.

Type seven- The "profound" cut and pasters

- "♥ Peace is not found elsewhere, it comes from within ♥"
- "Don't get confused between my personality and my attitude. My personality is who I am, my attitude depends on who you are ★☆★☆★☆".

Such specimens normally stuff their list of favourite pages with crassness like "Without Ant&Dec I'm a Celebrity is not worth watching", "Dont take a good woman for granted", "someday someone will come along and appreciate what you didnt" or "support Our Boys in Iraq/Afghanistan"....

* This post doesn't mean that this blogger has never been guilty of any of the above.

From letters to grunts

2012-01-05T13:11:00.001Z

Why vocal chords may go the wisdom tooth way as we increasingly interact by means of online grunts...

Once upon a time people living in different places would send each other letters. Maybe once a month, perhaps every fortnight, valuable time was devoted to the penning of what they'd been up to and all the important updates.

Then came the net and letters quickly gave way to emails. By the late 1990s, most people owned an email address, though it's difficult to believe that back then they often consisted of arcane combinations of letters and words like CXC765@spp2network1.dick.ac.uk

The physical ritual of opening a letter may have been on the retreat, but the concept remained nonetheless: suddenly people would spot new emails in their "inbox" folder. If anything, there was a chance to communicate more quickly and more frequently.

Fast forward less than ten years and the concept of "social networks" (read Facebook) rang the death knell for good old-fashioned emails. Private messages became increasingly rickety as less and less was there to be said, given that constant "updates" and "wall pictures" of everybody's latest night out meant little was left to the imagination.

By 2011, with the advent of iPhones and iWhatsits, most "distance" communication turned even more stunted.

Most Facebook interaction now consists of some people constantly publishing statuses (ie "omg my nephew's so cute!....xxxxxxx" or "fucks sake, stinky bloke nxt2me on bus") which is then followed by regular rounds of Facebook friends "liking" them (by simply clicking on a thumbs up button) or, if they feel more dexterous with the keyboard, leaving comments ranging from "wow", "xxx" or "awwwww" to "OMG!".

Who knows. Perhaps the toll of said levels of stunted interaction on human evolution will be such that, in a few centuries, our vocal chords will go the wisdom tooth way and turn out too undeveloped to articulate proper words.

It may be that we even go full circle and return to caveman sounds, with our exchanges (whether in person or online), consisting of thumbs up, "OMG" groans, "lovely" grunts and scratching chk chk sounds emanating from the palate which, of course, will convey a round of "xxxxxxxxxx" in pure Facebook style.

As for the answer to "wat u bin up2" (if we manage to articulate that, that is), we'll just shove a proto-phone in front of our interlocutor's eyes and show them how we pulled faces to the iCamera in a nightclub.

Ken Livingstone, "You Can't Say That"

2011-12-27T07:06:00.003Z

Book review

Like him or not (and this blog has always been a supporter), you've got to admit that public figures a-la Ken Livingstone are as rare as hen's teeth, especially in this day and age of spin, staged speeches and blind obedience to the party line.

Just try and count on your fingers the number of current MPs stemming from a genuinelly working-class background rather than academia, research or family fortunes. You may find you'll still have plenty of digits available.

Ok, Ken's autobiography may stretch a bit too long and its tons of details on 1970s local politics may test even the most passionate of political readers.

Still, unless you're prone to believe the rubbish routinely spurted out by the tabloid press, you've got to admire a man who (practically on his own) had the guts to take on both Maggie Thatcher and Tony Blair (as well as their fawning media machines) at the peak of their respective power.

And it's no coincidence that the most insightful chapters consist of the Thatcher government scrapping the Greater London Council elections in 1985, and Tony Blair's control freakery working overtime when votes were rigged in the vain attempt to stop Livingstone from running for London Mayor in 2000.

That is to say, the two dominant figures of post-1979 British politics showing that their mouthing of "freedom" and "democracy" was just that: an exercise in posturing, pomposity and egomania.

But his book is also an inspiring story of someone with the courage of his convictions in a political and media world stuffed with sycophants.

Livingstone must have felt very lonely each time he stuck to his beliefs and everybody reacted by throwing hissy fits and cries of "loonie leftie", "Eastern European tyrant", "pervert" and whatever other trick from the old book of right-wing character assassination.

Yet, ten or twenty years down the line, history proved him right. Quite a number of times.

Like when he was one of the few sticking up for Nelson Mandela while the Great Margaret Thatcher was busy calling him "a terrorist".

Or when the whole country was recoiling in horror at the prospects of sitting down for peace talks with Sinn Fein. Livingstone was physically attacked for pointing out that there was only one way out of the Irish issue. And guess who was proven right...

Or think how every single public figure today (barring a few remaining knuckle draggers) is at pains to portray themselves as "gay friendly". Ken Livingstone was almost literally ripped to pieces and hounded from his house when he was fighting for LGBT rights in the 1980s.

Now aged 66, with the London mayoral election on 3 May 2012, Ken Livingstone will be fighting what may turn out to be the closing battle of his political career.

Or hopefully not, if enough people realise that a millionaire Etonian buffoon acting as London Mayor won't actually do them any good.

The Best Moment of 2011

2011-12-22T11:54:00.003Z

The scandal that brought the most vicious media thugs to their knees.

The notion that nature will eventually run its course, even when it comes to the humbling of the most brutal bullies, came to a belated realisation with the News of the World scandal.

What a picture, to see that particular brand of vicious, foamin-at-the-mouth, self-righteous faux-moralistic fury turning on its own creators.

The succession of the nastiest bullies in the British media tumbling like sacks of rubbish in a garbage truck was just amazing: the arrest of Andy Coulson, the fall of Rebekah Brooks, News Corp withdrawing its BSkyB bid, and finally the News of the World going to the wall, while the two Murdoch thugs pathetically feigned amnesia in the background.

The phone-hacking scandal was just waiting to happen. When somebody's power to bully and intimidate with such impunity is allowed to fester to such poisonous proportions, it's just a matter of time til the putrefying boil bursts.

No doubt soon things will settle and hordes of dimwits are already stuffing their gob with the notion that tabloid thuggery (ie the indiscriminate phone hacking of murdered children, dead soldiers and grieving relatives) is none other than "free press".

But for a moment, just a moment, it was nice to see journalism in the UK back to a version of itself that doesn't resemble a cross between Shaun of the Dead and The Wicker Man.

"Shit pensions for all!"

2011-11-27T13:58:00.003Z

The right-wing solution to old age poverty

This blog felt the need to come back from the dead, if only as a one-off, courtesy of some of the most annoying red herrings that are floating about in the run-up to the public sector strike scheduled for November 30 across the UK.

I’m not talking about the typically contemptuous and shallow remark you often hear from the Tory right (as voiced on last Thursday’s BBC Question time by reptilian Tory MEP Daniel Hannan), which consists of tarring all public sector workers as “unproductive”, to which the obvious riposte should be: hope you never need your arse wiped by an “unproductive” carer or social worker in your old age, Mr Hannan, or that your house never needs “unproductive” firemen to put out a fire. And so on.

But that’s all by the by.

What is absolutely essential that we all stand up to, is the laziest (and, you will excuse me, most dim-witted) bit of criticism as thrown at the strikers. That is, “how dare those ‘privileged’ public workers stage a mass walkout and disrupt the country when most private sector workers are condemned to worse pension schemes”.

Leave aside the trite lie of “privileged pensions” in the public sector (the average being £7,800 - see this). Also, leave aside the fact that there’s nothing wrong, and everything right, in fighting to uphold the contractual conditions that public sector workers had signed up to in the first place.

What we should focus on is the warped logic according to which, because millions of people in the private sector are getting supremely exploited and taken for a ride with pension schemes ranging from very poor to non-existent (65% of all private sector workers have no pension at all – how’s that for a ticking bomb?), the right whingers’s solution isn’t to try and improve everybody’s pension.

No, they tell you, glaze-eyed, that the straightforward way out is simply crappier pensions for all.

They don’t think we urgently need to tackle head-on a future packed with even more millions of impoverished pensioners who will live longer, but with looser safety nets, less assets and even more deprivation than today. No, they just demand that the shrinking chunk of the population who still enjoy some protection for when they’re old and frail relinquish that too. Perhaps with a round of lashings before bed to beef up the penance.

Except, would they apply the same yardstick to any other walk of life? I don’t think so either.

They wouldn’t demand that people who expect decent treatment on the NHS stop acting like spoilt brats because what about those unluckier souls who catch MRSA in their hospital bed…

They wouldn’t tell you off for demanding the right to good schools just because some other people have to put up with crap ones…

And they wouldn’t give up their mansion because it’s not fair that the majority live in lesser places but still have to pay the same (and sometimes) more council tax so that the rich can enjoy their comforts better.

They wouldn’t do any of that. Because it would make no sense.

But, mainly, because this perverted race-to-the-bottom logic of “shit working conditions for all” instead of “better conditions for all” can only lead to one place – and with a series of socially devastating long-term consequences.

The sooner Tory brains cotton on to it, the better for everyone.

Paper Mask

2011-04-08T10:55:00.004+01:00

British cinema's hidden gem.

This little-known British noir is testament to the fact that inflated Hollywoodian budgets are irrelevant when it comes to quality.

Unfortunately though, Paper Mask is also evidence that, no matter how good a film, without marketing machinery there's no chance of making it beyond -at best- a Channel Four 11 o'clock slot.

And that's how I first came across Christopher Morahan's hidden gem. It must have been at least fifteen years ago, late night at home while flicking through the channels only minutes away from hitting the sack.

I don't know what in particular, but Paper Mask grabbed my attention straight away. Mysterious without being contrived, minimalistic without being arty, chilling and disturbing without ever going over the top. Within a moment, I was hooked.

It's the story of a frustrated hospital porter (glib-tongued Martin, the excellent Paul McGann of Withnail and I fame) who, in a moment of madness, decides to steal the identity of a recently passed away surgeon.

The thing is, said doctor had just applied for a job elsewhere, meaning that it was the perfect chance for Martin to burn bridges and start with a clean slate, a door to prestige and riches that a lowly orderly would only be able to dream of otherwise.

Needless to say, however, Martin is heading for collision course. Aside from a vague familiarity with hospitals, the guy just isn't a doctor, which means a succession of wincing mishaps are constantly round the corner.

Yet his charming ways help him cajole nurse Christine (Amanda Donohoe, from Nicolas Roeg's Castaway) which, for Martin, would prove a godsend. At least for the time being.

Paper Mask guarantees suspence from start to finish. While the viewer is constantly wondering what is going to happen next, the concept is so subtle and original that you may even end up sympathizing with such a manipulative and dislikeable protagonist.

Alas, chances are you've never heard of this film.

Twenty years after it came out, there are rumours of a forthcoming DVD release which, if true, would finally hand one of the best thrillers to ever hail from the UK a belated chance to be enjoyed by the wider public.

A must-see if you can manage to grab hold of it.

Basement

2011-03-28T13:48:00.003+01:00

"Face your deepest fears", says the tagline. That's right. You may have just wasted your money on the most useless film ever.

A few years ago my friends and I got into the habit of buying naff knockdown price DVDs for a laugh.

Two spring to mind, an American B-horror called The Dentist and an even worse one sporting the unbeatable title The Nosepicker. Proper cheap cheap cheap tacky dim-witted crap. We were pissing ourselves laughing at the crassness of the acting, the story, the soundtrack.

But it was great. There is something uniquely endearing about rubbish films.

In the unlikely event you may have heard of 2010's Basement, please be warned that it does not even make it into the above-described category. We are talking about something else here. Levels of nothingness that not even the most cynical of viewers could have anticipated.

Basement is the equivalent of being served a completely rancid dinner at a restaurant. Or the equivalent of buying a new suit only to discover that it's made of meat wrappers selotaped together.

What is unbelievable is the idea that someone, somewhere, thought that this thing could be knocked together, let alone produced, and that nobody along the way was honest enough to tell the director, the screenwriter, the producers or whoever that perhaps jacking it in would have been a more dignified move.

There's no danger of a spoiler because this film is about nothing. In theory the premises are interesting, not miles away from The Hole: a group of people are lost in the woods and end up in a dark and creepy basement. "Wow", you'd think, "Great!".

No it isn't. Because that's where it all ends. You wait and wait while the characters redraw the boundaries of the expression "dead end" and, within half hour, it's quite obvious that nowt's ever gonna happen.

The rest is some sort of tedious, repetititive, shallow, unengaging and inconsequential bilge. It goes nowhere. It says nothing. It's not even dumb. I guess it's the closest a film ever got to representing the concept of nothingness which, in a way, you could argue is actually an achievement.

Oh, and by the way, the acting is the worst ever. By far. Times ten.

"Basement" is like a Year-9 project carried out by a group of kids messing about with some recording equipment. Except worse.

Avoid.

Lessons from Japan

2011-03-15T13:45:00.005Z

They call it clean and efficient, but it takes one thing to go wrong for nuclear energy to cause apocalyptic damage.

This must be the first time in history a devastating natural disaster is made a million times worse by the added danger of an imminent nuclear one.

If the fifth largest earthquake since 1900 and a catastrophic mega-tsunami weren't enough, Japan is now having to deal with the worst threat of radiation leaks the world has known since Chernobyl.

And while the entire world population are wishing the excellent Japanese people to get through this terrible moment as soon as possible, it is also vital that we learn -and quick- from the events.

The point is. If a country as efficient as Japan, with the most advanced infrastructure and the most sophisticated earthquake engineering and seismic vibration control, can experience such levels of destruction and nuclear devastation, one is entitled to wonder if nuclear power is worth it at all.

For all the best state-of-the-art safety measures in the world, it can take one earthquake, hurricane, tsunami, human error, fire, terrorist attack, you name it, to completely fuck up and contaminate an entire country, its natural resources and tens of millions of people for decades.

They say that nuclear power is safe, but in my lifetime alone this is already the second time that nuclear devastation is taking place (please look at this).

Once again, it just needs to happen once to ensure absolute havoc for a very long time.

Germany's decision this morning to shut down all their nuclear plants built before 1980 and to order an overhaul of all the others can only be saluted. Every single other country should follow suit.

Why the West should intervene in Libya

2011-03-13T14:09:00.005Z

The "Libya-has-oil" argument is at risk of becoming the first time people are penalised for sitting on natural resources.

With civil war escalating and Libyan rebel forces losing ground to Gaddafi's troops (see here), a number of people have called against Western military intervention against the Libyan regime (see for instance the excellent Daily Maybe).

In short, the case against stepping in consists of:

a) the painful legacy of the Iraq war (which this blog opposed consistently from the outset); b) the fact that stepping in would hand Gaddafi a powerful ideological card; c) cries of hypocrisy related to the West's continuing support of other dictators in the Middle East (ie Saudi Arabia); d) the certainty that "[intervention] in Libya has more to do with control of that country's oil resources than with support for Libya's people" (also see Noam Chomsky on the matter).

No doubt their case has some merits. If there's one thing the world should have learnt from the devastating legacy of the trigger-happy Blair/Bush years, that is that military might should only be deployed as a very last resort.

But here is the thing.

Gaddafi is winning. What is currently looking like a massacre will turn into genocide the moment the entire Libyan territory returns under his complete control. That is possibly the only thing we can be sure of. The man is a sanguinary madman and he's already promised "a bloodbath".

Imagine for a second that David Cameron turned from jumped-up Tory to sanguinary dictator overnight and started slaughtering, say, tens of thousands of people in those Northern areas where local councils are opposing his cuts. Imagine you were stuck there, witnessing reprisals, massacres and disappearances.

Your side has tried to resist for weeks, but the battle is looking increasingly desperate and the prospect of a total bloodbath nearer. How would you feel if the rest of the world expressed their support simply by "freezing assets abroad" or expressing "firm condemnation" via a UN-sponsored piece of paper?

Would you not welcome foreign troops to save the lives of those around you?

"Will [military intervention] do any good?" asks Jim Jepps. I ask him to simply consider what will happen the moment Gaddafi's troops bag their victory. What good will come from that is beyond me.

And the oil thing.

We're witnessing the paradox of penalising tens of thousands of innocent people just because their country happens to be oil-rich.

Would you idly stand by the Srebrenica massacre if you found out that Bosnia was sitting on huge oil resources, just in case accusations of predatory opportunism may be levied?

Can you honestly say to those people "sorry to hear your house got bombed, mate...I'd help you if your country didn't have oil resources but, seeing as it has, we'll let Gaddafi slaugher you otherwise it looks bad on us?".

How does that work? It would probably be the first time in history people were actually discriminated in reverse on the basis of oil.

And yes, the West is propping up some appalling regimes around. It is right that we point out the hypocrisy.

But, given the failure to stop genocide in both Rwanda and in Bosnia, wouldn't it actually be refreshing - for once - if Western governments showed that military might can be used to genuinely rescue people from mass slaughter instead of the usual display of botched-up ideological crusades a-la Iraq?

It's true. Western leaders (with Blair and Berlusconi at the forefront) were kissing Gaddafi's hands for years. They armed him and pampered him. But so what? Isn't making amends and reversing crap and unethical foreign policy something to welcome with open arms?

Also read: When America left Arab Rebels to the Slaugher.

Another Year

2011-03-13T11:22:00.005Z

Mike Leigh's run of form continues.

Review by Claude Carpentieri

If there ever was an imaginary Award for Best Social Observation and another for Best Depiction of the Ordinary, Mike Leigh would probably make a clean sweep each time.

His new release Another Year follows in the footsteps of some of his best work - 2002's All or Nothing and 1995's Secrets And Lies to mention but two.

This, however, is probably the first time Leigh casts his lens solely on the middle classes.

Past criticism that most of his work is allegedly a patronising take on the working classes as downtrodden salt-of-the-earth types was always ingenerous. And, like in every other of his films, Another Year goes to show that dysfunctional interaction and social ineptitude, contentment and loneliness, delusion and caring alike have all little to do with class as they're just integral to humanity.

At the core of Another Year, a couple approaching retirement; husband Tom (Jim Broadbent - Slater from Only Fools and Horses), a geologist and wife Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a psychologist. Their house, a large and cosy one in a leafy London suburb. Their son, Joe (possibly separated at birth from Keane's lead singer), an affectionate, sensible young lawyer. Their relationship, an island of warmth, affection and security amidst a social cluster where all of their friends and extended family seem to struggle with solitude and assorted demons.

The film unravels over a year. Each season, a friend or family visits Tom and Gerri, initially proudly claiming that "all is fine" and that "they're happier than ever", only to gradually let on - generally courtesy of a few drinks - that the picture is a totally different one and that, actually, loneliness and ageing are corroding them from within.

Another Year works because of its contemplative, gentle pace and its minimalistic touches. It wouldn't be a Mike Leigh film if the camera work wasn't so subtly masterful and the depiction of the most precious details so intense.

But Another Year also works because it never wishes to lecture anybody on anything. It's just a take on the fact that sometimes companionship can serve as the best refuge against ageing, insecurity and depression.

An absolute masterpiece.

The Mechanic

2011-03-08T00:31:00.007Z

Two reviews for the price of one.

One.
The mere sight of big/fast cars makes you wet your bed. Films where burly geezers square each other up without flinching one bit give you a feeling of excitement which is only comparable to when you squash bugs or when you watch Jeremy Clarkson testing a new motor.

You probably think that smiling at someone in public makes you a wuss because you're a true man and any deeper than The Fast and the Furious makes it too hard to deal with emotionally.

If you ticked all of the above (and also if your parents used to lock you in the garage when you were a naughty child), then you'll probably find that The Mechanic is genius and you should watch it and spunk in your pants.

Two.
You just know from the start that the main bloke in the film (Jason Statham) will survive with barely a scratch. He takes no shit and he's built like a brick shithouse. The words predictable and boring start flashing in neon lights as the first five minutes unravel.

This is a geezer's equivalent of Sex & The City, the type of stuff that girlfriends only watch at the movies just to keep their manly boyfriend happy and to make up for when they forced him to watch Valentine's Day and, of course, Love Actually.

Oh...and Donald Sutherland has gone downhill and you just don't think that lots of guns, car chases, broken limbs and gravity defying jumps make for good entertainment, light or otherwise.

The retro-looking poster is great though. The gun even matches the colour of this blog.

Shoot yourself in the foot...

2011-03-02T11:26:00.001Z

...but not if you're Ashley Cole.

Imagine an ordinary worker picking up the most powerful/borderline legal air rifle on the market and shooting a random bloke for fun. The victim would "bleed profusely" and require medical treatment.

How long do you think the shooter would last before being disciplined and/or fired? Five minutes? A day? Two tops?

Well. Not if you're a Premier League football player and certainly not if you're name is Ashley Cole.

He wasn't even suspended for one poxy game. Apparently he said the word "sorry", so all is ok.

As this may set a legal precedent, see if you want to try it yourself. Shoot someone on the arse. Just for a lark. If the rozzers get involved just say that you're "sorry" and that was enough for Ashley Cole to get away with it.

Your case will be watertight.

A League Cup of their own

2011-02-28T12:36:00.003Z

Birmingham City FC, 27 February 2011.

No shame

2011-02-28T12:13:00.004Z

Insincere, dishonest, or just Nick Clegg?

Nick Clegg, in an article he wrote while in opposition to the then Labour government (Daily Mail, 4 Aug 2009):

"It appals me that, so far at least, no one in government seems prepared to lift a finger to help [Gary McKinnon]. But it is even more shocking that the Labour government has sat blithely by and watched it happen.

It is time for Gordon Brown and his Attorney General, Baroness Scotland, to step in and do the decent thing. Yet this case is about more than legal technicalities and political treaties. It is about compassion, knowing the difference between right and wrong - and the sorry truth is that the Labour Party lost its moral compass long ago. But the clock is ticking. The Prime Minister just needs to pick up the phone to make this prosecution happen. I urge him to do so, before it is too late. ".

That was in 2009. What happened in the intervening 16 months is well known. A general election took place and Nick Clegg's party got into a coalition government with the Conservatives.

Yet, aside from the new government ordering a psychiatric reassessment (it would be the fifth) on Mr McKinnon, the situation hasn't changed one bit.

Apart from one thing. That is to say, of course, Nick Clegg's view.

Look at what the current Deputy Prime Minister (the same person who urged the Labour Party, Gordon Brown and his Attorney General "to step in and do the decent thing"), wrote in a letter to Gary McKinnon's mother the other day:

"As these are legal proceedings, I have been advised that it would be better for you and me not to meet and discuss the details of the case at present".

Then look at how the LibDem's own Pravda (LibDem Voice), engaged in crook-eyed logical somersaults to rush to their guru's aid.

"Let’s imagine if Nick had decided not to go with the advice that he’d been given and decided to meet with Janis Sharp. Could that have compromised the case? Could it have made things worse for Gary? Is it right that the Deputy Prime Minister in his official capacity should be perceived to take a public view about an ongoing Court case?"

Oh. Is that so now?

And how come you didn't think, say and write the very same thing 16 months ago?

Just be ashamed, LibDems, you bunch of opportunists with the memory-span of a mite.

The King's Speech

2011-02-27T11:41:00.004Z

Will the story of King George VI make a clean sweep at the Oscars?

Today's headlines report that the forthcoming 2011 Academy Awards will mainly consist of a battle between The Social Network and The King's Speech.

Our money is on the latter.

And that's because, while most other films centred on royal families and nobility tend to be drowned in tweeness, romance and people prancing about while talking in riddles, The King's Speech covers totally different territory.

No doubt the film is also an interesting take on the historical events surrounding the abdication of Edward VIII and the dramatic run-up to World War II. But it is first and foremost a human drama about the scars brought about by the pressure and expectations of a repressive upbringing.

The story is centred around Prince Albert (Colin Firth), second son of King George V, a man whose severe stammer affected his public engagements and social interaction at various levels.

Spurred by his wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), he decides to see Mr Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), an Australian speech therapist and teacher of elocution. Not without hurdles, an unlikely friendship starts developing between them, as Mr Logue graduates slowly from inferior subject and subordinate to trusted confidant.

And so it emerges that Albert's speech problems stems from the typically dysfunctional and repressed childhood that generation after generation of royals have endured, a state of affairs brilliantly depicted by Johann Hari in his 2002 book God Save The Queen.

Bullied by his brother, repressed by his father and painfully corrected for his left-handedness and knock-knees, Albert grows up to believe that far from ever being good enough to lead, he will always be a source of embarrassment and scorn. Until, that is, Lionel Logue's intervention and a series of unprecedented historical events will help Albert (soon to become King George VI) overcome his stammer and deliver one of the most dramatic speeches in world history.

Ultimately, it is both David Seidler's powerful script (himself a stammer sufferer as a child) and Colin Firth's moving interpretation of Albert that make The King's Speech stand out. And yes, also hopefully mop the floor (twice over) with The Social Network.

"At least we removed a sanguinary dictator"

2011-02-20T10:56:00.007Z

What the recent events in the Middle East show about Tony Blair's corrupt moral code.

Imagine if you had a quid each time you hear the dwindling band of blind supporters of the Iraq war reciting that sorry little line as the best justification for Britain's biggest foreign policy atrocity of the last forty years.

"At least we removed a sanguinary dictator" is a sentence that oozes hypocrisy from each and every pore, a phrase rendered even more vomitous and hollow when you look at the hateful game of "this dictator good, that dictator bad" that Tony Blair played so well during his reign. With other people's lives, of course.

And so consider what his good mate and Michael Jackson impersonator Colonel Gaddafi is currently doing to his own people in Libya. In the last few days we learnt that his troops are "firing on civilians" and that 104 people have been killed in last week's pro-democracy demonstrations.

Courtesy, in no small part, of British military help agreed at the height of the Blair empire, the bitter irony being that while he was rinsing his gob with sermons on "exporting democracy to Iraq", Tony was shaking hands with Gaddafi and signing lucrative arms deals.

Our former Prime Minister, the same person who for years pontificated about the importance of removing Saddam the sanguinary, has been a staunch supporter of a selection of brutal Middle Eastern torturers and tyrants, Gaddafi and the "immensely corageous" Mubarak (see this for courage) to mention but two.

The recent events in the Middle East are the most painful reminder of Blair's corrupt morality.

Moralism...

2011-02-16T13:00:00.000Z

...puritanism and illiberalism. Upside down.

It really makes you want to reach for a bucket, this spectacle of Silvio Berlusconi and his right-wing hangers-on accusing their opponents of "puritanism" and "moralism".

For decades, the tycoon and its supporters built a whole political fortune on moralising, lecturing and pontificating about the dos and the donts of anything under the sun: same-sex couples, women's right to choose, stem cell research, euthanasia, sex education in schools and much more.

All of the above, apparently, wasn't bigoted moralism, puritanism or minding people's own business. Nah.

What is "puritan" and "neo-moralistic" as well as "snoopy and illiberal", instead, is people recoiling in horror at the prospect of a Prime Minister paying for orgies with under-age girls. That's according to one of his top supporters in government.

Right-wing logic: you've got to love it.

Selective snow

2011-02-15T11:13:00.004Z

Welcome to Osborneconomics, where the same snow can affect Britain's GDP but not that of other countries.

Isn't Chancellor Trustfund Osborne going to say anything about the terrible weather conditions of France and Germany over the last quarter of 2010?

Remember his comical claims that Britain's contraction of 0.5% was to be blamed on bad weather and everybody chuckled as they caught a whiff of BS?

Well, confirmation that Osborne was talking nonsense came out today in the form of comparative figures across various EU countries.

Guess what, the same big freeze, record temperatures, extensive snowfall and assorted disruption somehow failed to affect GDP figures in France and Germany. They may have slowed down a little, but still the former grew by 0.3% in Q4 of 2010 and the latter by 0.4%, a sharp contrast with Britain's output.

For the record, December 2010 was officially Germany's coldest in 41 years and the snowiest ever.

Something doesn't add up with Osborneconomics.

Daily Mail typo of the year

2011-02-15T10:17:00.004Z

Look at the caption above. It was visible until earlier this morning on the Mail online (alas it was later amended).

Little Fockers

2011-02-14T00:20:00.002Z

The successor to Meet the Parents.

Six years after Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro emerged as one of Hollywood's most unlikely comedy duos, the Meet the Parents franchise returns with male nurse Greg Focker and his wife Pam the proud parents of twins Henry and Samantha.

Greg's hard-earned family approval is destined to plunge to new lows as ever-suspicious control freak Jack Byrnes (De Niro) develops a new obsession: he is now on a mission to appoint his successor in charge of the whole family.

This will only mean more pressure on Greg, as his father-in-law can't help but stick his nose into his business - queue the familiar succession of misunderstandings and cringeworthy moments leading up to Jack trying to get his daughter back with her ex Kevin (Owen Wilson).

And while Dustin Hoffman and Barbara Streisand's contributions are purely nominal, Wilson and new addition Jessica Alba are pivotal in adding extra spice to the whole story.

Yet it's not quite clear why the follow-up to the mega successful Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers was slated by critics. Perhaps the default cynicism that tends to surround sequels may have something to do with it.

No doubt none of Little Fockers is groundbreaking comedy and, yes, a lot of it relies on poop scenes and all-too-familiar slapstick, but so what?

Exactly like its predecessors, Little Fockers does what it says on the tin without any high-brow ambition or post-ironic pretension.

The film contains a selection of laugh-out-loud and crude moments: from the "Sustengo" bits (which carry tons of cringe factor -especially the scene of Ben Stiller administering De Niro an injection in his private bits) and the two protagonists' trip to the kids' new school, to the random references to Andy Garcia or the final youtube video complete with remix.

Little Fockers may not mark a watershed moment in the history of comedy but it'll make for ninety minutes of good entertainment.

Jamie's 30-Minute Meals

2011-02-08T10:34:00.002Z

Far from lecturing and patronising, Jamie Oliver is actually suggesting that good and healthy food should be accessible to everybody.

I like Jamie Oliver.

Britain's most recognised chef has taken so much stick over the last few years amidst accusations that he is "lecturing people" (quote: Health Minister Andrew Lansley over Jamie's School Dinners) and meddling with their eating habits.

And yet, in a media world where celebrities, chefs included, seem to be earning fame and plaudits by virtue of shouting the F-word (literally) or the C-word louder than the next person, Jamie Oliver deserves praise for keeping away from cheap shots and loud-mouthed gimmicks.

More than anything, however, Oliver deserves credit for dishing out tons of advice on how to make your own food without ever coming across as inaccessible or over-complicated. Which is no easy feat.

At first glance, some of the dishes included in his latest series Jamie's 30-Minute Meals may look extremely elaborate and offputting. And yet they're not. It's amazing how much you can do in less than thirty minutes and with the simplest of ingredients.

More, Oliver's programme is based on extreme realism.

Pre-packed artificial microwaveable ready meals have become such a tempting option for most (this blog included) because, after a long day at work, the last thing most people fancy is a gruelling cooking session or a supermarket quest for exotic ingredients.

Which is why, far from lecturing and patronising, Jamie Oliver is actually on a mission to make simple yet good and healthy food accessible to everybody and not just the wealthy.

Most importantly, he doesn't think -shock horror- that everything has to be made from scratch. What matters, like Oliver himself writes: "this kind of cooking is all about using every minute wisely, having fun and reclaiming your kitchen for the job it was meant for".

The Tourist

2011-02-07T10:56:00.003Z

Winning hands down the Oscar for undeserved nominations.

Too many genres applied to a film can be a clue to its muddled nature.

For evidence, look no further than star-studded mega-budget movie The Tourist.

Described as, in succession, action, thriller, comedy, drama and romantic, The Tourist was designed to cash in on the pre-Christmas season and capitalise on big names like Angelina Jolie, Johnny Depp as well as on tons of glamour and beautiful scenery. It's not for nothing that it was described as "two of the world’s most beautiful people in one of the world’s most beautiful cities".

Nothing, however, can save a flimsy story and a weak plot, and The Tourist is no exception.

The initial intrigue withers within fifteen minutes when the story sags and it becomes apparently that this is a thriller with no thrills and nowhere to go but opulence, chocolate boxes and Angelina Jolie's lips.

Incidentally, her preening persona grates after a while and Johnny Depp looks like he hasn't really grasped what the directors have asked him to do. That is, of course, supposing that they knew themselves which, judging by the whole thing, is quite unlikely.

Cliches of 2011 #4

2011-02-06T14:07:00.008Z

"Use the off switch or change channel".

The recent controversy triggered by the TopGear trio of Disco Vicars (Clarkson, Hammond, May) and their round of offensive comments dressed up as just-a-bit-of-fun prompted the usual charge of lame justifications.

From "no-one cares" (read "I don't, meeeeee, therefore it follows that the whole world doesn't either") and "haven't the Mexicans more important things to think about", to "this country is losing its sense of humour", the defenders of casual bullying and casual racism have been out in force to stick up for the three white upper class broadcasters.

The lamest defence, however, comes in the guise of the trite "You don't need to watch TopGear. Use the off switch or change channel".

Which really says a lot about some people's sapped power of observation. Because:

a) TopGear is paid for by the taxpayer - that is you and me and the bloke over there. You may change channel (and rest assured Clarkson's is the last TV programme this blog would want to watch), but still you won't be able do jack to stop your own money from being used to fund Clarkson and his side-splitting remarks about the disabled, the blind and various vulnerable people.

b) This is no page-32 article written in dubious taste and published by some local paper we're talking about. Alas, TopGear is the most popular BBC programme worldwide. Me and you may switch off the telly, but in the meantime tens of millions of people abroad will have found more reasons to believe the Brits' growing reputation as a nation of small-minded xenophobic little islanders.

c) Like Steve Coogan wrote in his Observer piece this morning, "tolerance of casual racism [is] arguably the most sinister kind [as] [i]t's easy to spot the ones with the burning crosses".

So here's a question for the "I'm-Not-Racist" Brigade: what's more dangerous and more hateful, a twat dressed up in ku klux klan robes that everyone can see, or a (not so) subtle and growing set of xenophobic remarks thrown left right and centre and dressed up as "just-a-bit-of-fun"?

If no-one ever stood up to bullies and racists in the name of "getting-a-sense-of-humour" and "relaxing", telly would still be packed with stuff like The Black and White Minstrel Show and Curry and Chips.

You may be content enough to switch channels, but I don't want to be forced to spend £145.50 a year to reinforce the notion that the British constantly look down on everything foreign, thank you very much.

Jeremy Clarkson and his sidekicks can play the bully if they want, but not with the taxpayer's money.

PS: Incidentally- Three Brits pouring scorn on Mexican food saying that it's like "sick with cheese on top"? Brits laughing at other people's food???? Now what did you say about sense of humour?

Click here to access the full list of cliches (2010-11):
"Young female TV presenters are a response to market demand".
"You've GOT to own your own home";
"Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top";
"There are jobs out there if you really want one";
"The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".

Steve Coogan 5 Jeremy Clarkstwit 0

2011-02-06T11:44:00.003Z

Britain's top comedian slams Top Gear bullies.

You may have heard about the recent (minor) stir caused by Jeremy Clarkson the school bully and his two sidekicks Richard Hammond and James May with their latest round of embarrassingly lazy, xenophobic and unfunny comments.

After preying on the disabled and the blind (ha ha bet your sides are splitting), homosexuals and prostitutes, sweatshop workers and various nationalities that aren't the B-R-I-T-I-S-H (to be uttered in a proud, low-pitched tone), this time the three idiots decided to pick on the Mexicans.

However, the best answer to the current wave of testosterone-fuelled Clarksonite brand of bullying dressed up as "the-right-to-a-bit-of-fun" came from legendary comedian and Alan Partridge-creator Steve Coogan.

His article for today's Observer is just spot-on. Especially when he refers to "the regular defence you tend to hear – the tired line that it's 'just a laugh', a bit of 'harmless fun'" and to "the current "'postmodern' reaction to overzealous political correctness, [...] a licence for any halfwit to vent the prejudices they'd been keeping in the closet since Love Thy Neighbour was taken off the air".

Berlusconi opens government to fascist party

2011-02-06T10:01:00.001Z

How the Italian far-right went from God, Nation and Family to actively supporting an orgy host.

His conduct in government and a series of unfortunate remarks may have suggested otherwise but, until yesterday, Italian PM Berlusconi was at least able to reject accusations of flirting with fascism on the grounds that his allies were either former or reformed fascists who more or less turned their back on Mussolini.

Well, not anymore.

With his never ending scandals denting his popular support and the Italian right looking increasingly divided, Berlusconi is desperate for any vote he can grab.

This is why he announced yesterday that the unashamedly far-right party La Destra (The Right) have now joined his coalition and that one of their top dogs will soon be offered a ministerial post.

La Destra is Italy's direct equivalent of the BNP, except even more fascist. Though no doubt a very small party, tallying just over 680,000 votes (2,2%) at the 2009 European Parliament election, the group are the country's most outspoken apologists for the country's fascist past.

And indeed theirs is vintage stuff: from fascist-era typeface adorning their literature to their continuous references to christianity, "action" and "traditional values", all the way to their überfascist official slogan of "Dio, Patria e Famiglia" ("God, Nation and Family"), one thing you can't accuse La Destra of is lack of coherence.

However, how the "god" and "family" bits are going to sit next to a Prime Minister known for his penchant for orgies, libertine parties and underage prostitutes, no-one has yet managed to explain.

You bet that's going to be the most entertaining bit.

Un buen dia lo tiene cualquiera

2011-02-04T12:16:00.002Z

A series on contemporary European cinema.

3) Un buen dia lo tiene cualquiera
(Spain, 2007)

The Noughties went down in history as the golden age of Spanish cinema.

From internationally acclaimed horrors like REC and The Orphanage to amazing dramas like Volver or Julia's Eyes, Spain spawned one gem after the other.

Outside Spanish-speaking countries, however, most releases remain best-kept secrets and the excellent black comedy Un buen dia lo tiene cualquiera (rough equivalent "Everyone's gotta have a good day") is a case in point.

Based on genius social observation, Santiago Lorenzo's satire is a take on the plight of today's thirtysomethings and the extent people may go to escape incertitude and general skintness.

With his dot-com company gone bust, Arturo has lost literally everything. His only hope lays in a local-authority project that offers young people and students a place as live-in carers for frail and ill OAPs. And while Arturo may be a bit long in the tooth to qualify, with the help of a couple of kickbacks and dodgy documents, he manages to land a room at Onofre's, a pensioner known to social workers and nurses as charming, quiet and docile.

No doubt things seem to be looking up. In order to keep his rent-free status, all Arturo has to do is administer the old man his medication and keep him some company.

Little does he know, however, that behind the poor OAP there's a rabid Mr Hyde setting out to make Arturo's life a mysery.

Manipulative and vindictive, Onofre is a true force to be reckoned with. The result is an escalating war between the two featuring a series of comical moments that will both baffle and entertain the viewer until the end.

Welcome

2011-02-03T11:14:00.004Z

A series on contemporary European cinema.

2) Welcome (France, 2009)

Bilal has an impossible plan.

Having reached Calais after a 3-month journey from war-torn Northern Iraq, the Man Utd-obessed refugee is desperate to cross the Channel and make it to London where his beloved girlfriend Mina has recently emigrated with her family.

After an aborted early attempt that was thwarted by the police, Bilal conjures up a strategy to defy the freezing waters and swim all the way to England.

Not being a fine swimmer, however, he realises that he's in need of some intensive training.

This is how he meets local swimming instructor Simon, (Vincent Lindon) a surly, middle-aged French geezer who's in the throes of divorce papers and major changes in his life.

As the training sessions continue and the two develop an unlikely bond, the story meets a major turning point when Bilal finds out that Mina is suddenly being forced to marry one of her cousins in London.

With the boy getting increasingly impatient and unsettled, Simon learns first-hand the intense prejudices and restrictions that illegal immigrants and asylum seekers endure, cue his hostile neighbour (whose doormat sports the word WELCOME in capital letters - oh the irony) grassing him up to he police for "aiding and abetting" illegal immigrants.

Directed and written by Philip Lioret, Welcome's intensity is not always easy to digest and the drama and anguish of its final moments may prove too much for some people to take.

Yet, the film's gentle and minimalistic script and its touching tale of determination and humanity will make you feel grateful for allowing you into its world - a world that too many people refuse to acknowledge, blinded as they are by xenophobia and the convenient refusal to accept that some people are desperate and will do anything to escape war, poverty and devastation.

An extraordinary story that will stay with you for days.

Das Leben der Anderen

2011-02-02T13:06:00.003Z

A series on contemporary European cinema.

1) The Lives of Others
(Germany, 2006)

More often than not the most effective or tensest moments in a film are delivered through subtle details. A single nod, a close-up, or even silence can prove more crucial in building-up a story than a million gimmicks.

The Lives of Others (original title: Das Leben der Anderen) is possibly the best film I've ever watched in terms of how subtlety is at the core of a powerful story.

Written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others is a drama set at the peak of East German communism. It's 1984 and no-one suspects that one of the most stifling and controlling political regimes of the twentieth century is actually a few years away from dissolving.

East Germany was home to one of the most powerful secret police forces known to man. Making sure that nothing could ever change, loyal and devoted Stasi informers were there to obediently enforce submission. Threats, arrests, carrots and sticks were dished out with varying degrees of brutality by an army of zealots competing for who could gain the prize for the most righteous servant of "the state" and make a career out of it.

Except that, when your entire concept of power is based on grassing people up, it's only a matter of time before the entire edifice crumbles.

A state like the former DDR was bound to be consumed from within. Everyone was a potential suspect. You were monitored if you dissented and you were monitored if you didn't - the idea being that you've got to have something to hide if you're toeing the party line so religiously.

These are the premises behind The Lives of Others.

Playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) is one of the few artists the regime hasn't managed to alienate or force into exile.

His loyal and inoffensive work, with the added bonus of being one of the very few DDR writers still read in the West, grants him a fairly privileged life and access to powerful friends.

His life, however, is about to be turned upside down as powerful Stasi officers start suspecting that not even he is above suspicion.

Determined to dig up dirt, they decide to put him under strict surveillance, bugging his flat and monitoring everything 24/7. The task is assigned to officer Wiesler, ruthless, dedicated and robotic as well as a firm believer in the East German state and therefore a rising star within the secret police.

Trouble is, Wiesler will soon realise that behind Dreyman's surveillance there is a gruesome abuse of power. A mighty Minister has cast his eyes on the playwright's actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria - blackmailing her into an affair.

What makes the story particularly fascinating is the way it unravels. Each of the characters maintains an aura of mystery about them until the end, almost in line with the general state of mistrust that reigned supreme in the former DDR.

And so the viewer is not quite sure whether Dreyman has indeed something to hide, nor is it obviously clear that Christa-Maria is not involved in something shady. Wiesler himself - is he truly warming up to the people he is monitoring or will he put his loyalty to "the state" before basic issues of humanity?

Also masterful is the meticulous reconstruction and depiction of East German landscapes. Minimalistic designs, modernist offices and barren interiors add up to perma-grey skies and a rarefied atmosphere to portray a sense of general sallowness and fear.

Intense, claustrophobic and suspenseful, The Lives of Others is a gripping tale of humanity before it's a drama or a thriller.

Awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006, it is definitely one of the best productions to have hailed from continental Europe over the last few decades.

Conviction

2011-01-30T12:20:00.002Z

What a waste of a film.

In 1983, Kenny Waters was convicted of the brutal murder of a woman in a town in Massachusetts. Little was known at the time that the case was going to become one of America's biggest miscarriages of justice, with Kenny ending up locked away for eighteen years over something he never did.

Tony Goldwyn's Conviction is the true story of how Kenny Waters' sister Betty Anne embarked upon a two-decade long mission to have her brother freed.

At any rate, the story is obviously compelling and even moving at times. The intention is obviously good and it certainly helps that both main actors, Hilary Swank (interpreting Betty Ann) and Sam Rockwell (Kenny Waters) pull off a fine performance.

The problem, however, is that the film fails completely to convey any sense of drama and involvement as the whole thing unravels in a totally mono-dimensional manner. For almost two hours it bangs on about one thing and one thing alone without any subplot, twist or character development or anything that encourages the viewer to give a particular damn.

Compare it with other films based on judicial cock-ups and assorted legal wranglings (In the Name of the Father or North Country to name but two) and the result is a lot of squandered potential and a story that comes across as both drawn out and uninspiring.

In other words, more of a Sunday afternoon TV film than a Hollywood release. Avoid if you can.

127 Hours

2011-01-28T12:16:00.000Z

One of the contenders for this year's Academy Awards.

Danny Boyle is one of those film directors I have never been able to decide whether I'm a fan of or not.

Some of his films I watched a dozen times each. There was Shallow Grave, one of the best thriller noirs of the 1990s. Or, The Beach, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, a gripping depiction of human nature and the way communities implode under the weight of envy and factionalism.

Then there's Slumdog Millionaire, showered with praise and awards, a touching tale of exploitation and expectations set in modern India. And, of course, Boyle was also the man behind one of best the horror films of the last ten years, the disturbing 28 Days Later.

However, what's annoying about the most famous living British director is what seems to be the 'ultra-cool' and 'in-with-the-kids' factor. Some of his stuff is reminiscent of those 'cool students' circa-1998 who would look at you in amazement at the news that, no, you don't actually like Moby or Fatboy Slim. "What? Really, man? But Moby is sooooo cool!".

Cue the irritating camera work. The fast forwarded bits. The industrial amounts of clipped images. The super trendy soundtracks, and god forbid if the film tallies two consecutive seconds without music in the foreground. And so on.

Trainspotting springs to mind, one of the films I've never been able to actually grasp - which is my own fault no doubt.

Still, you can't fault the man. Radcliffe's biggest export seems to have struck gold again, as his latest release is one of the hottest contenders for this year's Academy Awards.

100% based on true events, 127 Hours is an engrossing tale of survival and endurance. It's the story of Aron Rolston, an adventure sports fanatic who became trapped by a boulder in the Utah canyons in 2003.

Played by the excellent James Franco, Aron inadvertently falls into a crevice with the added bad luck of a massive boulder tumbling til the point it's encased against his arm.

As the place is literally in the middle of nowhere, the protagonist embarks upon a race against time, loneliness, climate and physical pain in an increasingly desperate quest to get out alive.

And what a desperate quest it is. Most viewers would probably wonder what they would have done had they been in his shoes. Not a lot, probably, if you consider that Aron was fighting alone while standing up for five days with all but a trapped arm, a cheap swissknife and a water flask.

Which is what makes this film particularly special. Aron's emotions are portrayed masterfully, with his sense of panic and despair gradually spiralling out of control as his life begins to flash, literally, before his eyes. Bravely, however, the man manages to keep his nerves under control, which is ultimately what will allow him to survive to tell his story.

A must-see.

To Melanie Phillips and the bigots

2011-01-28T11:09:00.001Z

"Don’t demand the right to spit in the face of gay people, and claim you’re being picked on when you’re asked to stop", Johann Hari, The Independent.

Spot-on.

Paranormal Activity 2

2011-01-27T10:20:00.001Z

The prequel to one of the scariest horrors of the Noughties.

When the first Paranormal Activty came out in 2009, this blog professed its outmost admiration.

There was a horror film that did what it said on the tin. A slow and relentless build-up which resulted in tons of suspense without relying on monsters, zombies or any sort of camera trick. I obviously speak for myself, but when I watched it, it really freaked me out, which I guess is what a film called Paranormal Activity should be doing in the first place.

One year down the line, and its follow-up came out in the guise of a prequel.

The formula is still the same, except that the story is now centred around Kate's sister's family and a series of spooky events in the weeks prior to what happened in the first film.

There are both a different director (Tod Williams) and writer (Michael R. Perry), but you wouldn't have noticed, given that the same minimalistic touches and meticulous attention to the build-up are applied this time as well.

In short, still very scary, except that this time you more or less already know what to expect, which detracts a little from the tension and the anticipation.

However, if you did miss the first one, this is likely to make you jump big time nonetheless.

The bad news is that a third instalment has already been commissioned for October 2011. As it's very difficult to see where the story can go any further without trivialising it in the style of Saw (now likely to be in its 22nd incarnation) or Final Destination (except that it's never final), one could be forgiven for their scepticism.

Paranormal Activity 2 is released on DVD on Feb 8, 2011.

Blame the weather

2011-01-25T11:56:00.005Z

Why Osborne's excuse that snow is to blame for the collapse in economic growth is comedy material.

Britain's economy contracted 0.5% in the last quarter, the most in a year, according to the latest from the Office for National Statistics.

While everybody agrees the figures are evidence of a double-dip recession on its way and even the CBI boss accuses the government of "lacking vision" ("Measures that cut spending but killed demand would actually make matters worse", in the words of Sir Richard Lambert), Chancellor George "Trustfund" Osborne had the cheek to seriously blame last month's snowfall and cold temperatures.

No doubt because he had first-hand experience of both.

But let's just suppose Osborne was right. At the end of the day, it is true that last December was the coldest on record.

It still isn't enough to explain entirely such a massive slump to the point of also cancelling out completely October and November.

The truth is that no amount of comical excuses from Britain's Chancellor will cover up for the devastating decisions they've inflicted on the country.

And a simple comparison will be enough to expose his bullshit for what it is.

December 2009 was also an extremely cold month. Granted, not as extreme as December 2010, but still the Met Office described it as the coldest on record since 1995, with heavy snowfalls and widespread disruption to the economy.

Yet that didn't prevent the economy from growing last year for the first time in six quarters (see this).

More. Look at January, February and March 2010. The three combined were all much colder than usual (January in particular was "the coldest over the UK since 1987 and equal eighth-coldest in a series from 1910") and each of them was officially listed as "anomalies" in terms of mean temperatures.

Guess what? The economy grew over that quarter too. No mention of bad weather there, eh?

The truth is, Osborne is useless and this government is so inept that they would still deny a piece of evidence if it stared at them in the face with a sign that said "evidence".

Neanderthals

2011-01-25T09:11:00.004Z

...More likely she wouldn't with someone like you, Mr Gray. Bargepole and all...

***UPDATE***
And guess who, dear Reader, is sticking by the two Neanderthals? The Daily Mail, of course, with a supremely condescending and patronising piece by Julie Welch.

Look at this dribble of goo in the guise of print:

"Right or wrong, most men – not arty leftie metrosexuals, but the vast majority of blokes – appreciate the game because it offers male-only companionship. Somewhere that isn’t complicated by the presence of women. They want a place where they can be neanderthal and boring, where they can swear, behave badly, let off steam and, yes, be sexist. There aren’t many places left for these emasculated men to simply behave like blokes. Football is one of the few areas of life left that allows them to".

So, according to Ms Condescending, if you don't form a pack with other men, hang around in caves, smash the place up and make monkey noises, you're an "arty leftie metrosexual". Like, if "the vast majority of women" don't just giggle and slog away in the kitchen and talk about make-up and gossip about the latest on Heat magazine they're all bitter lesbofeminists, right?

And since you're at it, Welch. Would you also include racist and homophobic slander as part of the legitimate right "to simply behave like a bloke", or is that too "censorship and criticism"?

The abolition of election campaigning

2011-01-22T12:43:00.001Z

Why the government's NHS proposals have pushed bullshit politics to untenable levels.

The run-up to the general election. Those dreaded weeks when the country is bombarded with oily messages, grinning politicians hugging babies, kids, huskies, or anything immediately at hand.

Those useless televisual feasts where leaders nod to borderline-whiplash levels, the smarmy "I know what you mean" can be heard over and over, and Nick Clegg calls everyone by name without the slightest grasp that he may be 'overdoing it' a bit.

The quazillions spent on multicoloured placards, posters and assorted ads. The junk flowing through the letterbox, the tedious door-knocking, the bingeing on promises and proclaims.

Wouldn't it be a wonderful idea if all of the above was done away with?

There is now irrefutable evidence that election campaigns are not only useless and a waste of money, but also outright deceitful.

We had plenty of that when Labour was in power and we're having more of the same (except at a faster rate and even more barefaced) now.

For all the industrial amounts of political gobbing off we heard last year, there was no mention from either the Tories of the Liberal Democrats that tuition fees were going to be hiked up; that VAT was going to be increased; that the NHS was going to end up mangled and "reorganised" from the top down; that sick and disabled people were going to suffer cuts of up to a third in their incomes; that child benefits would be touched; that the Education Maintenance Allowance for disadvantaged students was going to be scrapped at a stroke; that more measures were going to come in to make it easier to sack workers...and the list could go on for hours.

And make no mistake. For all the bullshit they will try to feed you, this has nothing to do with "compromise". It is crucial we understand that neither of the Coalition partners promised or even suggested any of the above. It is not as if the Tories or the LibDems are reluctantly taking on board what the other partner had advocated all along.

Far from it. Both Tories and Lib-Dems fervently denied they would have anything to do with each and every one of those policies and, in some of those cases, they actually campaigned against (i.e. VAT rise, tuition fees, etc).

The recent bill on the NHS is just taking the piss.

So here's the proposal.

Do away with election campaigning. Scrap it, ditch it, just knock it on the head. Give all that money to charity. On polling day people will cast their vote on the basis of what they've seen in practice over the lifetime of that parliament and after plenty of evidence of how MPs' decisions actually affected their lives.

That should be more then enough to make up their mind. Bullshit politics has now reached tipping point.

About bleedin time

2011-01-22T11:19:00.001Z

"Andy Coulson quits as David Cameron spin doctor".

Shameless David Laws

2011-01-18T14:01:00.005Z

Where the word "hypocrisy" pokes its ugly rear.

Today's Guardian treats its readers with the squalid spectacle of a Coalition supporter, David Laws, championing the mass cuts that have just been unleashed on the country.

And while there's nothing new in hearing a government cheerleader reciting the usual script, what makes it particularly grating is the fact only last May millionaire David Laws was caught red-handed claiming £40,000 to pay rent to his boyfriend.

Sure, Mr Laws was not the first MP who fiddled the system and defrauded the taxpayer. But he was certainly one of the most outspoken "hard-liners" when it came to pontificating on "the pay and perks of hundreds of thousands of public sector workers", which is where the word "hypocrisy" pokes its ugly rear into the equation.

So for him to smugly lecture ordinary people on why their nosediving standards of living (squeezed incomes, higher bills, higher VAT, mass redundancies and huge cuts to public services - from care workers to the police and from the NHS to food inspectors) are actually a good thing, that's just taking the piss.

This ruthless (as well as electorally suicidal) lack of empathy highlights the importance of not having a political elite stuffed, literally, with millionaires who are clueless when it comes to the price of bus fares or gas bills and the way they impact on ordinary people.

PS. Since we're at it. Laws writes that:

"in April the first Lib Dem-inspired increase in the personal income tax allowance will boost the incomes of basic rate taxpayers, and take hundreds of thousands of low earners out of income tax altogether".

This is a piece of LibFibbery that we're hearing time and again. What they rarely tell you however is that:

a) It won't be until 2015 that the increase will actually begin to cover the full £10K threshold. That's if it goes ahead (there are already reports of grumbles amongst Tory ranks);

b) The forthcoming £1K increase will be cancelled out by the VAT hike and galloping prices.

Cliches of 2011 #3

2011-01-16T12:47:00.006Z

"Young female TV presenters are a response to market demand".

Last week former Countryfile host Miriam O'Reilly won a case against the BBC on the grounds of ageism, after losing her job the moment she turned 50.

It was reported that O'Reilly "had been asked if it was 'time for Botox' and was warned to be 'careful with those wrinkles when high definition comes in'". The case ended with the BBC issuing an apology and Director General Mark Thompson phoning Miriam saying: "Sorry, we got things wrong in the way older women are treated".

One category of people, however, reacted to the news with little sympathy, their views typified by entrepreneur James Caan. On last Thursday's BBC Question Time, he said: "TV channels respond to market demand", adding that "if we're really honest, as a consumer society [we want to see] young, pretty, dolly-looking people" on TV.

And so here we are again. The mythical notion of "the consumer society" evoked to justify anything that suits whichever ruthless practice of the day - nevermind questions of humanity, taste or simple pig-headedness.

It's the 21st-century version of the Ancient Spartans' custom of chucking people off a cliff as a means of 'purging' their population of weakness. "Sorry very much, it's what the market demands", become the default smokescreen for anything, crass varieties of geezerist ageism included.

Shame these people never specify which "market demand" or "demographics" they're referring to.

No doubt there are copious amounts of randy people who genuinely look forward to seeing "young, pretty, dolly-looking people" on the telly, the same way there will always be a constituency for the Sun and various rags of an onanistic inclination.

But what about the equally vast amounts of viewers who are unfazed by all of the above? Haven't they got a right to have their "market demand" heard too?

There are millions out there who don't judge the quality of a programme on the basis of whether the presenter was born in 1940, 1960 or 1991.

Those who would rather television reflected real life (ie not everybody looking like a fembot); those who find this obsessive quest for everything "young" and "fast" and "trendy" and "wicked" both pathetic and patronising.

Or those who think that we've already fulfilled our fix of giddiness or trollop-ness on both the TV screens and the newsagents' shelves.

Ignore all of the above and the market demand becomes a severely crook-eyed one.

Click here to access the full list of cliches (2010-11):
"You've GOT to own your own home";
"Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top";
"There are jobs out there if you really want one";
"The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue";
"Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

What the government is doing to the sick and people with disabilities

2011-01-14T13:27:00.003Z

We have one month only to save our parents, our partners and our children.

Contribution by Sue Marsh.

Dear Mainstream Media
I'm mystified, totally puzzled.

I know there are lots of cuts happening all at once and group after group must be lobbying for column inches or news slots.

Students, middle income child benefit recipients, housing benefit claimants frightened they are about to become homeless, nurses, fire fighters, police, local councils – we all want you to take our cause to heart, to tell people what is really happening on our behalf.

But there is a group who might as well not exist. We have no-one but ourselves, yet our voices are probably the weakest in society.

Most of us can’t physically march, some can’t even speak at all and others don’t know what is being done to them. We have no networks of influential contacts, most can’t attend rallies or flash-mobs.

Sick and Disabled people are now facing cuts of up to a third in their incomes. Since George Osborne’s Comprehensive Spending Review last October, there has been a steady drip-drip of almost daily announcements that have stripped away decades of hard-fought dignity in just a few short months.

* Employment Support Allowance (ESA) will now be time limited to 1 year (Cost : £4752.80 pa)
* 2.27 Million of the 2.5 million claiming ESA will now be considered fit for work (91%)
* Up to 750,000 of the most profoundly disabled who claim DLA will also be found fit and have their benefits stopped (25%)
* Benefit rates have been frozen (Potential loss of up to 15% of income over 5 yr parliament)
* Housing benefit caps will make many disabled people homeless
* Work support schemes are being scrapped at a time when unemployment is already creeping towards 3 million. The “Access to Work” programme will be scrapped, which helped small and medium sized businesses adapt premises, job centres face cuts and a private, American firm (ATOS) have been given an almost total monopoly in forcing us into work, paid commission for each “success”
* Local councils face cuts so vast (27% over 5 yr parliament) that they have already started to cut vital support services – pulling funding for hospices, axing specialist school provision, closing hospital wards, cutting care packages – the list goes on and on. This article might help to put things into perspective
* Disability Living Allowance is to be scrapped and replaced, whilst adults needing full time residential care and children in hospital will have the basic right of mobility taken away from them, with the scrapping of mobility payments for these groups.

These are not people with a little twinge here and there. A few headaches or a sore finger. They are the Mum with breast cancer or teenager with heart disease. They are our sons with leukaemia or our profoundly disabled sister with muscular dystrophy. They are the college friend who broke his spine in the army or the lover who nearly drowned on holiday and was left brain damaged. The wife or the daughter or the nan who used to run marathons, now fighting for every agonised breath from lung disease.

Most aren't born sick. The odd headache or a twinge in the chest becomes a tumour or a blood clot and life changes forever. That Thursday morning doctor's appointment stops the world from turning and the blood runs cold in your veins. Most face disability in a heartbeat as their car flips into a ditch or their ski comes loose. Lawyers and bankers and producers and columnists don't have a special immunity gene. Their spines crush and their previously taken-for-granted bodies let them down just as easily as those of cleaners or shop-assistants. This is the most important issue any of us will face - and we will face it. One in three will develop some kind of cancer, over 10 million in the UK suffer from a disability or chronic illness.

In exactly one month, DLA is due to be slashed by parliament. By the 14th February, if sickness or disability come for you or your loved ones, (and sadly, the statistics are that one day, in some form, they will) you may find that all those NI payments and tax contributions have been for nothing.

You may find yourself totally dependent on a partner financially, unable to get treatment, care or equipment to make your already unrecognisable life liveable. If you have no partner, you may find yourself in abject poverty, or even homeless as you try to face the un-faceable.

If your soft and perfect new baby turns out to be autistic or dying, you may have to helplessly watch them die. If you think this is dramatic or overly emotional, actually it probably isn’t dramatic enough. I have one month to make you aware of what your future could hold.

Today, we use the only tool we have – the blogosphere.

You can help by posting this and articles like it (see Broken of Britain) on Facebook, websites and Twitter, by calling radio phone-ins and writing to your MP (a template letter will be available at Broken of Britain too) Sign petitions, tell your friends, write to the papers. The hashtag #ombh will be used on Twitter to bring these articles together.

Just help. Please. Before you realise that we were right, but we couldn’t change things in time to save your Mum or your wife or your son.

This article appeared originally at Diary Of A Benefit Scrounger.

The toxic effects of job insecurity

2011-01-13T12:53:00.014Z

From lower productivity rates to family dysfunction and from poor customer service to depression and lack of motivation. What lies behind David Cameron's calls for "less red tape".

David Cameron's recent plans to make it easier to sack staff in the first two years of their employment have sparked an intense debate over the nature of Britain's labour market.

After the "fluffy years", it was only a matter of time before the crook-eyed default Tory approach to the world of paid employment would resurface.

The problem for Cameron and the bosses' organisations, however, is that - unlike the Thatcher years - there's very little left in terms of workers' protection for the government to wade in with the axe.

Extreme job insecurity in the UK is already a growing reality.

According to the OECD, Britain is in the top three along with the US and Canada (and well under the OECD average) in the strictness of employment protection index (1985-2008), which measures "the procedures and costs involved in dismissing individuals or groups of workers and the procedures involved in hiring workers on fixed-term or temporary work agency contracts".

Given the companies' free access to casual staff on "zero hours contract", or the free use of "temps" (which, by law, can be hired repeatedly on fixed-term contracts for up to four years before any tie comes into place), the lax regulation on probationary period for regular staff, as well as some of the lowest levels of statutory redundancy pay in the Western world, the notion that Britain's employment regulations may be at the core of the current dole rates is simply comedy material.

If we carry on this way, soon the only crusade left for the British Chamber of Commerce and the Tories to embark upon under the guise of "cutting red tape" will be against the right for workers to empty their bladder or take a crap at work.

However, what the last few days also highlighted is the almost total abdication on the part of the left and Labour in the fight against the galloping job insecurity and its noxious effects.

This line from the normally commendable Stumbling and Mumbling blog bothered me to the extreme. While sceptical of David Cameron's proposals, author Chris Dillow also wrote:

"There’s good evidence that [employment protection] reduces workers’ effort and increases absenteeism. This suggests that - at the margin - Cameron’s proposals might increase labour productivity".

Now, the reason why the above quote bothered me so much is that it shows how toxic and widespread certain myths are that even well-informed and well-read people can buy into them without questioning.

In brief, the Daily Mailesque-fable that a permanent job or certain guarantees at work will automatically turn you into a slacker. They ain't gonna sack me, so why bother, basically.

And how can you dispute that if even the usually meticulous and pro-left Chris Dillow can cite "good evidence" on the matter?

Except that said "good evidence" points to three pieces of research from Portugal and Italy which are solely and exclusively focused on specific (and already obsolete) legislation passed in those two countries in the 1980s and 1990s. Those laws were extremely protective - overly protective in fact - in a way not remotely comparable to anything Britain ever experienced, not even at its unionised peak.

It's like saying "there's good evidence that January is not a cold month and in fact look at this link to prove it". Except that it points to average January temperatures from the Canary Islands and Dubai.

The fact is, instead, that there's literally a mammoth body of research out there warning of the toxic long-term effects of job insecurity (click here for a summary).

Over the years detailed studies took place around the world, from the US and Canada to Australia, Sweden, Korea, Germany and more. The findings leave room to no doubt: there is a clear correlation between excessive levels of job insecurity and a variety of negative outcomes.

The initial advantages of "increased flexibility and lower costs" for the employers are undisputed. But little is ever said about the long-term effects that "casualisation may have on important aspects of national economic performance such as skill formation" and, most importantly, the ticking time-bomb that is widespread casualisation as weighed against "long-term financial planning".

But the strongest and most consistent evidence is the one seen across firms, industries, and countries linking job insecurity with "negative employee attitudes, behavio[u]rs, and health" and with the fact - as noted by several researchers - that "job insecurity is more stressful than job loss itself".

Amongst the negative effects, a "powerful negative influence on motivation", "reduced effort" and "poor safety compliance by employees". Low levels of job satisfaction are also associated with negative employee attitudes, lower customer performance and effectiveness with customers as well as with -in turn- a detrimental effect on group morale.

And that's without taking into account what "the longer term negative effects on workers' depression levels", or "the systemic [relation] between job insecurity and marital and family dysfunction" or, even, the proven effects that "parents' job insecurity has on children's school performance as measured by grades" .

The fact that "job insecurity reduces job satisfaction is attributable to the uncertainty of not knowing how to predict or control job threats".

And that's because, while insecurity in the short-term may spur a worker to perform better if the goal is a latter stage of more protection and various perks, an ongoing perception of "precariousness" will start having an adverse effect, as the worker will feel increasingly uncertain that their persistence can be sufficient enough for them to retain their job.

For a worker with little to lose, the lack of ties will offer no incentives to stop them from slacking off or "looking elsewhere" altogether.

Tory proposals on sacking people are both useless and criminal

2011-01-11T12:03:00.007Z

Mass sackings: welcome to The Great Conservative Economic Strategy.

Another fine display of 21st century British politics took place yesterday when David Cameron dropped the bombshell on the millions of unwitting voters that it should be made much easier to sack workers in this country ("Firms get power to sack the slackers", Telegraph).

Now, of course, the Tories don't have a mandate for that. They never mentioned any of their "employment reforms" at any stage of the election campaign. They didn't because they knew that voters would punish them for that. And in fact, at this point, if you're an ordinary worker and you still think voting Tories will do you or the country any good, then you may as well chop your own bollocks off. The outcome will not be dissimilar.

It's astonishing that, in the face of the biggest crisis in sixty years, The Great Conservative Economic Strategy amounts to the sacking of half a million public workers, even easier sacking procedures for everybody else and -of course- higher costs of living.

The Tories' proposal is based on the contempt they have for ordinary workers. If you are an employee, you are - by default - a burden, an irritant, a disposable pain in the arse. Whatever the issue, financial or otherwise, you're the first one who should bear the brunt. No matter how much this may undermine morale or loyalty to the company. No matter how insecure it makes you feel. You're not a person. You're just a cheap pawn.

David Cameron's proposed new "Employment Charter" starts from a fallacy the size of the Millennium Dome: the ridiculously simplistic illusion that if you decrease protection at work, employment levels will rise automatically.

This is so all over the place that it's difficult to know where to start. But let's just say that the post-1997 implementation of the minimum wage and new maternity rules in Britain were followed by the lowest dole rates in thirty years. Look, instead, at the swirl of anti-Union laws and other measures brought in by Thatcher. It did nothing to even slow down the sustained high unemployment rates that kept looming large over the 1980s and 1990s.

Or consider Italy and Spain, where the last ten years saw most extreme forms of casualisation and disposable employment steamrolled in. Their unemployment levels are still looking extremely sorry, in fact worse even than before.

The second fallacy is that the Conservatives are making it sound as if the current British labour market was stifling and inflexible, while it is already one of the most boss-friendly in the EU as it's cheaper and easier to get rid of staff in Britain than it is in most of its counterparts.

Currently, bosses already enjoy the possibility of hiring as many agency or casual workers as they please. These come with no tie whatsoever. They are literally disposable.

If, however, the same boss saw fit to recruit "properly", there is a probationary period of up to 6 months in which he/she can sack said employee on a whim - literally - no notice, no motive, no compensation. Nowt.

After that, the boss will still have up to 12 months in which he/she can still fire him without any possible fear of being done for unfair dismissal or forking out a penny in statutory redundancy pay.

At this point, you will already concede that if a manager hasn't clocked who the slacker is without successfully rectifying the situation, it is he or she who should be sacked and not the worker.

And it's not over yet. While unfair dismissal claims can be brought after a year, you have to work a total of 24 months in order to be entitled to the lowest possible allowance of statutory redundancy, which - please note - is by far the cheapest in Western Europe.

However, egged on by the British Chamber of Commerce, David Cameron thinks that all of the above amounts to "too much red tape" and that the period that allows staff to submit unfair dismissal claims should be increased from one to two years.

But the icing on the cake is the Coalition's proposal to levy a charge on workers who decide to still fight their corner. This may be vintage Tory philosophy, but in this case it just borders on the criminal - as it crucially links access to justice not to whether you're in the right or not, but to whether you can afford it.

And, needless to say, it also ignores the fee that plaintiffs already pay their lawyer, or their union in the form of fees, if it is they who provide legal counsel.

Incidentally, unions rarely decide to pursue claims that they themselves think will lack weight. The amount of pre-screening that is done prior to deciding whether to gamble on a worker's claim is immense. And that's without even including the conciliation and arbitration stage.

And even so, official figures say that, in the first quarter of last year, just 11% of cases taken to an industrial tribunal were successful - and a puny 5% for constructive dismissal. Amazingly, this is the system that bosses complain is "weighed against them" and is "affecting employment levels".

The Conservatives are mistaking increased turnovers with higher employment rates. Their new proposals will do absolutely nothing to get people back to work.

All they will achieve is a system where it's easier to sack unfairly and without scrutiny and a workplace where it will be even more difficult, often impossible, for an honest worker to fight bullying and victimisation or to seek protection against unscrupulous employers.

Youth in Revolt

2011-01-10T12:49:00.004Z

Another hit from the new breed of US comedies: endearing and hilarious without relying on cheap tricks.

The last few years have seen the rise of a new subgenre of US comedy dramas.

Little Miss Sunshine and Superbad, but also Juno, Mama's Boy and Last Day of Summer were all, on average, less cheesy, more sombre and almost more European in their approach to romance and humour, turning a new leaf from to the late 90s/early 00s gross-out prototype of American Pie and Roadtrip.

Where ten years ago the template was the raunchy antics of testosterone-fuelled teenagers, and the soundtrack ska-punk and Blink 182, the new breed is more random, but also more reliant on quirks and black humour - and the background music a more subdued mish mash of indie-folk and alternative country.

And like its contemporaries, Michael Arteta's adaptation of the novel Youth in Revolt decides to focus on the life of a coming-of-age semi-nerd, a social outcast whose quest for romance is approaching desperate levels.

As always, Michael Cera is excellent in his interpretation. His character Nick Twisp is whimpier, clumsier and more sensitive, but also less popular and lonelier than most of his peers. To give you an idea, "I'm a voracious reader and listen to Frank Sinatra. So needless to say, I am still a virgin" is the way he describes himself.

Right from the start, the viewer is made to wonder how Nick can cope with his tactless family, a collection of a dysfunctional chain-smoking mother and her ex-con oik of a boyfriend on one side, and his "scruffy, graying father" (played by Steve Buscemi) with trophy "bimbette" on the other.

Nick's exsitence is so dull and stifling that even a short trip away on his mum and boyfriend's trailer feels like a welcome change. And it is there that, most unexpectedly, he casually bumps into his "cause to rebel": the all-things-French obsessive and teaser-of-the-highest-order Sheeni, Nick's only hope of finally reaching "the holy grail of manhood".

Except that it's not so easy. The way their romance unravels is just epic. Let's just say that, as the unlikeliest of allies, Nick is joined by his imaginary alter-ego François. Based on Sheeni's ideal man (a comically brazen, no-bullshit, badass Frenchman), he is trying to spur Nick into winning Sheeni over and compete with her supercool semi-boyfriend Trent. Needless to say, a chain of complications ensues, some more random and inconsequential than others, but all pure genius when it comes to their entertainment and comedy-value. More we will not say, as you really have got to watch it to get an idea.

Youth in Revolt is at once endearing and hilarious without ever being over the top. A truly excellent film.

The hysterical reaction to Jack Straw's words

2011-01-09T14:49:00.001Z

The left's own version of tabloid hysteria?

It says something when you have to think 150 times before writing a blog post because you fear your words may be misinterpreted and land you into trouble.

By now, you will be probably aware of the stir caused by Jack Straw's words in the wake of the recent conviction of a gang of nine men for the vile grooming and raping of 26 teenage girls.

In particular, the former Home Secretary was criticised for saying that there is a "specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men... who target vulnerable young white girls" and that "[W]e need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way".

The Labour MP for Blackburn added that: "These young men are in a western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they're fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off-limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically. So they then seek other avenues and they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care... who they think are easy meat".

Now, I'm hardly Straw's biggest fan, but I find some of the reactions to his comments verging on the manic, and it's a shame as they all come from some of my most favourite bloggers: from accusations of "Nazi racial profiling" and "smearing ALL pakistani men" on Liberal Conspiracy to the baffling "Jack Straw's sex fantasy about dark men and white girls" by Madam Miaow, "Jack Straw's scaremongering" on Pickled Politics and "generating double standards" by Chris Dillow on Stumbling and Mumbling.

So here's some thoughts on the issue:

1. Hysteria

Bear in mind that Straw was particularly careful to also say that "Pakistanis, let's be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences", adding that "overwhelmingly the sex offenders' wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders".

He shouldn't have bothered. He got likened to a Nazi before you could even utter the word.

This is the disturbing aspect. No matter the disclaimers, the specifications and the carefully weighed words. The same people who, on the left, rightly criticise the tabloid press for whipping up hysteria and frothing at the mouth, are guilty of the same knee-jerkism and are quite happy to throw cries of "RACIST!" and "NAZI!" and "DEHUMANISING PAKISTANI MALES!" at the drop of a hat.

2. Religion and culture, not race or nationality

Jack Straw made one mistake. He was too restrictive with his reference to the word "Pakistani". Religion here matters way more than a specific national heritage.

And, in fact, the chief executive of charity Barnardo's implied it when he said that "[his] staff would say there is an over-representation of people from ethnic minority groups among perpetrators - Afghans, people from Arabic nations, Pakistanis. But it's not just one nation".

Race and the colour of the skin has got absolutely nothing to do with it. Sure, there will always be some racist dunce trying to exploit the issue to make up for their lack of brain cells.

But it would be criminal if we let them deflect the core problem (and that's where too many people on the left go postal the moment you even mention it): the culture of misogyny that is rife amongst certain Muslim communities.

It is a deeply-ingrained culture of misogyny, and nothing else, that still allows the scandal of an estimated 17,000 women a year who are victims of honour crimes, including murder. It is a deeply-ingraned culture of misogyny that makes it possible, according to government figures, for 300 school children a year to disappear for the sake of forced marriages. It is misogyny and its ideology of oppression that makes it possible "to force young girls – some so young that they are still in push chairs", in the words of Yasmin Alibhai Brown – "[to be] covered up in hijabs". And that's just in the UK.

But who will speak out for them if simply raising the issue will land you accusations of "tarring all Muslim men with the same brush" and "the Ku Klux Klan [too] lynched black men in the Deep South"?

Like Johann Hari wrote two years ago, "[I]nsulating a religion from criticism – surrounding it with an electric fence called "respect" – keeps it stunted at its most infantile and fundamentalist stage. The smart, questioning and instinctively moral Muslims – the majority – learn to be silent, or are shunned (at best). What would Christianity be like today if George Eliot, Mark Twain and Bertrand Russell had all been pulped? Take the most revolting rural Alabama church, and metastasise it."

3. Red herrings and whataboutery

I find it deeply counterproductive when bloggers like Chris Dillow, someone I've always admired and respected, feel the need to write: "You wouldn’t ask the “white community” to look into itself if a white guy commits a sex crime, so why ask the “Pakistani community” to do so if a Pakistani does so".

I don't know why Dillow decides to drag "colour" into the debate, so let's just focus on his actual statement. Now, since no comparison is possible between "white" and "Pakistani" (white being a "race" encompassing anybody from Moldova to Iceland and "Pakistani" being a nationality), let's stick to the words "English community" or "British community" to see if they are ever "asked to look into themselves" in the face of problems or specific crimes.

The answer is yes. Older readers may recall the humongous debates and soul-searching that took place at the height of football hooliganism across the 1980s and 1990s.

There were literally thousands of political statements, opinion columns and sociological analyses written to dissect what was being dubbed "the English disease" and the term is still used to these days whenever UK football supporters behave like troglodites (see this and this, for instance).

Of course you do get some people shouting that "it's not just the English!" and "what about the football violence that also takes place in Holland, Italy and Turkey?", but most people understand that exercises in whataboutery and hyperbole will do little good.

Or take the tons of analyses written on the "British drinking too much", or what the government dubbed "the distinctive characteristic of the British drinking culture", its violence and aggression.

So, yeah, "the English" or "the British" have been asked to do some soul searching when it comes to certain problems. And rightly so. Bring it on. If there is a specific problem that is prevalent within your own society or community, what good does it do if you just drown it out with cries that "it's not just us!" and "AAAAARRRGH!". If you really cared about your own "community", why would you make "it also happens elsewhere" and "talk to the hand" the core of your argument?

As a person of Italian heritage, if there's one thing I find most grating is Italy's persistent shying away from an honest analysis of the Mafia on the grounds that it "hurts Italy's image" and "it doesn't do Italy any favours" and "not all Italians are in the Mafia".

And you don't need a degree in sociology and criminology to conclude that the biggest beneficiaries of sweeping cultural problems under the carpet are the perpetrators of said problems.

4. The actual issue

Dillow is right to produce the hard figures about sexual offences (for instance the fact that in Lancashire "4.163 per 10,000 white Brits were arrested for a sex crime, compared to 0.44 Pakistanis"). Once again, Straw said it himself that "overwhelmingly the sex offenders' wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders".

However, Straw also referred to the specific issue of gangs grooming teenage girls for sex. And, in that case, out of 17 cases since 1997, 50 out of the 56 men convicted were Pakistani Muslims.

It was Manzoor Moghul, chairman of the Muslim Forum who said that "Offenders are under the misapprehension white girls are easy prey. The way they dress, their culture, makes them easy pickings". And it was Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim youth organisation, who said to the BBC that "[t]here are some Muslims who think that as long as these sex gangs aren't targeting their own sisters and daughters the issue doesn't affect them" (see here).

Not regarding girls from different religious or ethnic groups with the same respect granted to their own sisters or mothers is a vile practice. It is not racist to say so.

Cliches of 2011 #2

2011-01-09T10:56:00.005Z

"You've GOT to own your own home".

This particularly simplistic cliche' shuns a series of complications.

For instance, in an ever unpredictable job market, what happens if your only hope of dodging the dole queue means moving from place to place?

Or, what do you do if you don't do your homework properly and you find yourself saddled with a structurally unsound home or with the family from hell living next door? If you were renting, you'd just tell the landlord and pack your bags. But if you bought it and don't have the extra dosh to sort it out, then you may be up shit creek. If not for the rest of your life, definitely for an awful long time.

But the most unpalatable truth is the one related to finances.

Of course, it's all very nice to own a house if you have the funds, but Britain's the place where an alarming number of people have fallen for the spell of "getting on the property ladder" and the illusion of "asset ownership" no matter how barely they can afford it.

The last 15 years have seen a ridicuous number of tv programmes turning home ownership into the nation's biggest fetish: Property Ladder, Location Location Location, Grand Designs, Homes Under the Hammer, One Year to Pay Off Your Mortgage, and god knows how many others. They all had one thing in common however: the notion that, yes, you too can own a house and point at it while hugging your smiling partner- that's what makes you a happy family. The ultimate dream. The be all and end all of existence.

One thing, however, is never mentioned: the simple fact that it's not your asset and it will not be until the final instalment thirty-plus years from now.

You can be paying back your mortgage religiously over decades, each and every month, easily in excess of hundreds of thousands of pounds of hard-earned cash. But if something goes tits up (i.e. you lose your job), that all goes down the drain and so does "your asset" - which means your home gets repossessed.

Did you know that in the last three years alone in excess of 120,000 families were kicked out of their "own assets" (details here, here and here)? Remember 120,000 is the number of homes repossessed, meaning that the average number of people affected since 2007, children included, may be knocking on half a million.

It's a national tragedy, but one that the media rarely talks about, perhaps because of its supremely depressing nature. Or, perhaps, because it may highlight the unpleasant story that lies behind the most inflated and speculative "industry" in the country, one where average house prices didn't double or triple, but quadrupled (QUADRUPLED), between 1995 and the pre-recession peaks of 2007.

Other cliches:
"Not everyone is obsessed with...";
"Why can't Britain cope with snow?...";
"Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top";
"There are jobs out there if you really want one";
"The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue";
"Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Acronyms

2011-01-07T13:54:00.006Z

WDPWLT? WIATA*? Are you wondering what this is all about? Join the club.

The need some people have to drop an acronym or two or three assuming the whole world will automatically understand them must be one of the most grating internet practices around.

Granted, I am slow when it comes to picking up online trends and trendy lingo. I'm still just about managing OTT and LOL and I can't even recall the last time I referred to it as "the British Broadcasting Corporation".

But what's all this. Why do people do it? Why would you want to write ISTM instead of "It seems to me", IMHO instead of "in my humble [or is it honest] opinion" or AAMOF to simply say "as a matter of fact", is something I will never grasp. Are we really in such a rush, or is it because it sounds more trendy, trim and "dude", you know?

I was reading an online debate the other day. It was about media coverage of last month's students protests and a certain journalist's habit of reporting demonstrations with patronising dollops of "oh my god those rallying children aren't they so young- won't you hand those brave young children a hot soup, poor little things?", when I kept stumbling upon people referring to the hospital-evoking MSM.

"Mainstream media", as it turns out. But I'm telling you, it took me a while to work it out. Or maybe I should say ITMAWTWIO...

Oh, well. Acronyms. They cause so much problems you don't even wanna go there.

*WDPWLT= Why Do People Write Like This; WIATA=What Is All This About

Buried

2011-01-07T12:41:00.001Z

Definitely the most claustrophobic film ever made.

What would you do if you suddenly woke up trapped in a wooden box the size of a large coffin and your last memory was an armed ambush in the middle of the Iraqi desert?

What if all you had with you was a mobile phone, a zipper, a knife and a pencil and you knew that precious oxygen was running out? And wouldn't you just lose it altogether if, on top of choking from lack of air, you also had to deal with the most infuriatingly inept BT-style receptionists as you're desperately trying to get through to various government agencies?

Buried deserves at least three awards.

Originality, to start with. I don't know about you, but I've never heard of a film set entirely inside a coffin and with total continuity from start to finish. For one hour and a half, the viewers are pinned to their seat as truck driver Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds, the one and only actor in the film) is working against the clock trying to conjure up ways of getting out of his box alive. The script, courtesy of Chris Sparling, is simply genius.

Yes, the cynic may have a field day arguing that "why didn't he phone this and that instead", "why was he wasting so much oxygen" and "if only he'd tried to push that lid a bit harder", but the fact is Buried is one of those few films where, at the same time, you don't want to blink in case you miss a precious detail, but you also don't want to watch as suspense levels spiral out of control.

Which is why Buried would also net a second award for camera work. It's brave, in the era of the dwindling attention span, to decide to bet on a film based on limited spacing (to say the least), where the brightest bit is the flickering of a torch and the widest camera shot is from the protagonist's feet.

If you think there are so many yawn-inducing thrillers out there with millions invested on special effects, monsters and assorted camera tricks. Buried instead will feel like a pressure cooker from start to finish and will make you jump and give you sweaty palms by means of the simplest and most claustrophobic of settings. Which is why you'll hear of young Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes again, no doubt.

None of the above would have been possible, however, without Ryan Reynolds' spectacular performance. Which is where the third and most important award should go. It's not every day you hear of films that are 100% centred around one person and one person alone.

And yet, Reynolds pulls it off without a glitch. The way he conveys, in succession, panic, fury, despair, helplessness and the awareness that life is just slipping out of his hands is just timeless.

Ultimately, Buried offers a slightly different perspective on the Iraq war. While a vast array of films has already portrayed the military side of things and the point of view of both Western soldiers and the Iraqis, the work of many working class civilians and contractors in the backdrop is often overlooked.

"I didn't know it was going to be like this over here", sighs Paul while on the phone to the hostage rescue team. "No-one's going to pay five million dollars for me".

And he's not kidding.

Eastenders cot death: too much too crass

2011-01-06T12:08:00.003Z

Has the BBC soap joined the foul practice of exploiting bereavement for ratings?

BBC News reports that "around 3,400 viewers have complained" about EastEnders' New Year storyline (first announced in November) in which Ronnie Branning turns into a baby snatcher upon discovering that her own newborn has died of cot death.

It is true that the original intention of drawing awareness on sudden infant death syndrome was commendable. But by drowning it out with industrial dollops of unnecessary sensationalism and unrealistic drama, the result was just a mish mash of morbid goo and crassness.

In a statement, the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths said: "Despite the continuing statement [...] by the BBC that 'FSID were consulted on the storyline...', FSID had no involvement in the planning or adoption of the specific 'baby-swap' plotline. The behaviour and actions of Ronnie Mitchell are in no way 'endorsed' by FSID as a typical, or even likely, reaction of a bereaved parent".

This blog has always believed that what sets Eastenders aside from a lot of its pappy televisual competitors is their knack for challenging storylines and social (though not narrative) realism.

Covering the tragedy of a cot death and its aftermath in order to raise awareness and promote infant health would have been admirable enough. But to introduce such an unfeasibly brutal development smacks of exploiting grief for the sake of jacking up TV ratings. Tactful, it was not.

Which is why extra credit goes to actress Samantha Womack for quitting over the distressing scenes.

UPDATE (7 Jan): OK, now the whole thing has turned into a witch hunt as usual, with the hyaenas from the Daily Fail landing on the carcass in search of bits to gnaw at. What the fuck has Womack's past lovelife got to do with anything?

Top Tories and LibDems against VAT rise

2011-01-05T18:40:00.002Z

Leading figures from within the government explain why increasing VAT is wrong.

David Cameron:
"You could try, as you say, to put it on VAT, sales tax, but again if you look at the effect of sales tax, it’s very regressive, it hits the poorest the hardest. It does, I absolutely promise you." (April 2010)

Conservative Home:
"Higher VAT is an unacceptable tax on the poor. [It] costs the poorest twice as much" (December 2009)

Nick Clegg:
"Liberal Democrats have costed, in full, our proposals for tax cuts. We can tell you, penny for penny, pound for pound, who pays for them. We will not have to raise VAT to deliver our promises. The Conservatives will. Let me repeat that: Our plans do not require a rise in VAT. The Tory plans do. Their tax promises on marriage and jobs may sound appealing. But they come with a secret VAT bombshell close behind." (April 2010)

Vince Cable:
"A big, sudden jump in VAT would stall any early recovery and hit shops hard. Also, some companies have learnt how to dodge VAT". (September 2009)

The Kids Are Alright

2011-01-05T07:27:00.003Z

One of the best films of 2010.

What happens when a happily married lesbian couple is turned upside down by their two children's decision to track down their biological father and anonymous sperm donor?

These are the premises behind the excellent The Kids Are Alright, certainly one of the best-acted, most charming and most thought-provoking films of 2010.

Cinema is rife with stories about "traditional" heterosexual parents striving to keep their authority intact, but never before has a film attempted to portray two ultra-liberal lesbian mothers struggling to hold together their family and preserve the values they so lovingly fostered.

The film is centred around five characters, the two mothers, laid-back Jules (Julianne Moore) and control-freak breadwinning Nic (Annette Bening), the two relatively happy and well-brought up teenage kids Laser and Joni, and finally their biological father Paul, played by Marc Ruffalo, an easy-going, self-satisfied, bike-riding organic food entrepreneur.

This bittersweet story is captivating right from the start, an excellent portrayal of quirks, frailties and neuroses not miles away from 2006's Little Miss Sunshine and its superb collection of cringeworthiness.

The combination of Nic feeling threatened by Paul's appearance, Jules' doubts about both her own sexuality and her relationship with Nic, as well as the two teenagers grappling with this new set of stresses are all ingredients for havoc.

Brilliant.

Devil

2011-01-04T18:06:00.000Z

A review of Shyamalan's first of his 'Night Chronicles' trilogy.

Written (but not directed) by M. Night Shyamalan of Village and Sixth Sense fame, this thriller squanders copious amounts of potential right from the off.

Which is a shame because the premises are indeed excellent.

Any situation involving anyone stuck inside a lift for more than five minutes should be enough to give the viewer sweaty palms. When that happens to five tetchy and unlikeable strangers trapped in the guts of a corporate skyscraper in Philadelphia, that becomes even better script material.

There are two problems however.

One is that the game is given away within a minute. Forget any build up or suspense related to whether any mauling is going to be the work of the supernatural, a deranged nutcase or pure bastard bad luck. As the film kicks off, the narrator (one of the office tower security guards) sets the record straight. This is about the devil and nowt else. Everytime the sense of suspense grows or something ominous happens, it gets killed off by a ready-made answer about the fact that the devil dunnit again.

And while that doesn't completely spoil the film, here comes the second and most crucial glitch.

Instead of focusing inside the lift in order to cash in on the claustrophobic element and the rising tension within the trapped group, the director keeps zeroing in on both the detective and the security guards in the control room. It's almost as if the people behind the camera were reluctant to spend any longer than strictly necessary on the five protagonists and their personalities. The only effect is to water down the whole thing, partly the reason behind a majorly anti-climatic ending.

Ultimately Devil is not at all a bad film. It flows, it's never dull and it's well acted too. Only, a little bit pointless.

Five reasons to be ashamed of Britain

2011-01-04T12:03:00.003Z

Yesterday we wrote about five reasons that should make Britain proud. Now it's time to look at the glass half empty.

1) The tabloid press
This blog has said it repeatedly. The poisonous role played by tabloids in this country has no equivalent elsewhere in the world, not on such as a scale and certainly not on a daily basis. Perfectly reasonable debates are routinely hijacked, distorted or turned hysterical for the sake of printing the FATTEST headline.

These are people who stop at nothing, whether illegal phone tapping or the publication of outright defamatory lies no matter the consequences, in order to make more money.

The tabloid world is a neurotic one where they will rant against "elf'n'safety-gone-mad", but they'll also be at the top of the queue screaming about "lazy-council-failing-to-warn-of-slippery-road" if it fits their angle on that day. They will cry outrage about a beauty contest for 13 year olds but then publish the most appallingly risque' photos in the same piece.

And it's at least partly due to the tabloid press and headlines like "Afghan-born dole-scrounging lesbian dog mauls mother of two" that Britain's turned into a country of paedophile-obsessed finger-pointing hypocondriacs where celebrity culture, bullying and OTT sexualisation have all gone through the roof.

2) The cost of living
Someone needs to explain why British taxpayers have to pay such massive levels of council tax for third rate services (ie rubbish collected once a fortnight if you're lucky). Or why house prices are so much higher than elsewhere in the Western world. Or why rail fares are the most expensive in Europe while offering such a poxy, overcrowded service. Or why so many people have to resort to borrowing in order to pay their bills (UK consumers account for two-thirds of total credit card debt in the EU). And so forth. Quite simply, unless you're loaded, Britain is not a kind place to be.

3) Celebrity culture
Yes, they have Big Brother, X-Factor and various spin-offs in practically every other country. But what they don't have is such a colossal industry of gossip magazines a-la Heat and the tabloid press (see point 1) to offer the whole machine such a platform for publicity. In the last ten years or so, Britain has reached endemic levels of celebrity-obsession.

This may also explain why there's such a widespread desire to conform and fit in with certain pre-packed images and why nine females out of 10 in 2009-10 were wearing Ugg Boots. Look what Cheryl Cole is wearing! Doesn't she look great? And so can you! Hop to New Look, TopShop and Miss Selfridge and you too can look like her. Can't afford it? Just stick in on plastic. Gowon. Just this once.

4) The loutish Brit abroad
According to the Foreign Office, the number of Britons arrested while on holiday abroad is soaring. Worse, figures show that Britons top the league when it comes to twatty behaviour on foreign soil, whether it's drug-taking, binge-drinking, fights or sexual violence (see this report published by Time magazine).

And it really is embarrassing, because it then becomes easy for people abroad to tar all British holidaymakers with the same brush, even the many who have no intention of behaving like Attila the Hun by cutting and pasting English town centre-style street-vomiting and brawling across to the warm shores of Rhodes, Benidorm or the Algarve.

Why, however, so many British kids, low, middle and upper class, appear unable to control their repressed selves the moment they fly abroad in the summer remains an embarrassing mystery.

5) The state of national football teams
At the next world cup it'll have been 48 years since England managed their last (and only) World Cup. The most expensive League in the world, wages that should justify "top talent", all the build-ups and the talking-up and still FA happens when it's time to deliver.

As for Scotland and Northern Ireland, it feels impossible to believe that in the 1980s and 1990s they would regularly qualify for major tournaments. As for Wales, there's still hope in Gareth Bale.

Click here to read "Five reasons to be proud of Britain".

Five reasons to be proud of Britain

2011-01-03T17:23:00.004Z

A number of things set this country aside for the better. These are a few alternative ones that springs to mind:

1) Animal welfare
If you've ever endured the sight of ladies (and some men too) proudly donning dead animals' fur elsewhere in the world, cherish the fact that in Britain the same practice is culturally frowned upon to say the least.

Sure, there's still a long way to go, but the fact that both the Queen and her royal guards still insist on wearing bearskin hats is further proof that the country is progressing faster than its rulers.

And this applies to foxhunting and various other cruel practices too. Even the opponents of the ban know that cruel power trips (because "sports" they're not) don't stand a chance as far as the country's public opinion is concerned.

2) Music
Yes, Britain may be suffering from a major trade deficit, but if there's one area where the export balance is firmly active, that's music. Just think of how many legendary bands and songs this country exported over the decades. No other country of similar size has ever produced such a number of music-inspired movements that have been so appreciated and copied around the world.

And anywhere you are in the world, if you turn on the radio, any moment, a singing voice from Basildon, Glasgow, Swansea, Manchester or elsewhere in the UK is likely to keep you company whatever it is that you're doing.

3) Drink driving
In several other countries too many people still see no wrong in taking a car after a night drinking, whereas in Britain even the nastiest geezer would not consider it. OK, maybe some still do, but in the public consciousness the practice is firmly and definitely considered taboo.

4) Food

"What are you talking about", I hear you say, "British culinary heritage pales in comparison with that of France, Spain, Italy, China, you name it". But at least most Britons are open-minded enough to adopt foreign dishes as part of their culture without any fear of food fascism or snotty superiority complexes seeping to the fore.

Few may satisfy the most demanding purists, but it's nice to know that most British towns and cities have a wide variety of international restaurants on offer. Oh, and ale. Overseas they don't know what they're missing. Not to mention the vegetarian "V" marked on the menu. That really is a rare sight abroad.

5) The Right-Wing
This will definitely piss off many readers. But when you look at the state of conservative or centre-right parties in other European countries, Australia or the US, it makes you feel a touch better about David Cameron and his lot.

Don't get me wrong. I think there are at least a thousand reasons not to ever vote Tory in this country, and I wouldn't even under torture, but they have come a long way.

When you look at Sarah Palin, Italy's Berlusconi or Spain's abhorrent Partido Popular and their appallingly bigoted superhomophobic proto-medieval brand of macho-conservatism, Britain's Tories come off best.

Click here to read "Five reasons to be ashamed of Britain".

The Coalition Isn't Working

2011-01-03T16:03:00.003Z

Remember the famous Saatchi & Saatchi poster campaign from 1979? Growing dole queues, strikes, riots, more riots and uncollected rubbish. If it was re-written today, it would look exactly like this:

The relentless rise of transport fares

2011-01-03T12:25:00.007Z

Why the periodical calls of "spend and save the economy" are grating and snobbish in the extreme.

Over the Christmas period, you may have overheard various pontificators telling the populace to spend, spend, spend in order to "save the economy".

With what money though, they never say. Look at the figures.

According to the Office for National Statistics, salaries in Britain went up in 2010 by 2.3%, less than the current rate of inflation which now stands at 3.2%.

That looks positively tame when you consider the inflation-busting rises ordinary people are having to deal with whichever direction they look.

Transport fares, for instance. As of yesterday, they went up across the whole country. In Birmingham, adult bus fares increased by 5.55%, daysavers rose by 8.3% (they now stand at £3.60) and the precious evening savers were done away with altogether (see here for full details).

Of course, like each and every single time fares go up, transport companies justify the policy by playing the usual old record of "rising business costs", "massive reinvestment" and "new vehicles".

Yet, an external observer may be excused if he or she expects those buses to be powered by Ferrari, paved with gold, and sporting a crew of smiling hostesses dispensing free drinks to cheer you up on your ride to work. Because since 2005 tickets on the former Travel West Midlands and current National Express West Midlands have gone up by a mental 80%. That is eighty-per-cent, from £1 five years ago to the current £1.80.

Top executives aside, hands up anybody if your wages have gone up by anything remotely like that. The most recent minimum wage increase, for instance, was a meagre 2.19%.

So, when Chancellor George Osborne returns from his "luxury break" at Prince Charles’s favourite ski resort, can any journalist with a pair please ask him what advice he's got for the millions of low wage workers facing galloping costs eating further into their wages?

The public mauling of Chris Jefferies

2011-01-02T14:11:00.001Z

How the concept of "innocent until proven guilty", one of the pillars of British democracy, is being butchered by the tabloid press.

By now you're all probably familiar with the fresh display of tabloid barbarism seen in the wake of the tragic murder of Jo Yeates.

In brief, in the 72 hours that sandwiched the arrest and then the release of suspect Chris Jefferies in connection with the murder, the media handed him some diabolical public guillotine for the sake of a few extra banknotes basted in lynchmob froth.

No-one, not even the police, knows whether Mr Jefferies has anything to do, or not, with the murder. In fact, no-one will know until a trial takes place.

But the fact that Mr Jefferies hasn't even been charged yet seems to have completely eluded the tabloids. They've already passed their verdict, dishing all the dirt they could dig up in order to destroy him.

The news massacre has been so mental and OTT that even Attorney General Dominic Grieve went on record expressing his concerns that the current coverage of the Jo Yeates murder may be in breach of the Contempt of Court Act as well as an impediment to the ongoing legal proceedings.

The following articles are a fine analysis of the public mauling of Chris Jefferies:

Mark Thompson ("The media need to stop these witchhunts") focuses on the astonishing collection of what he dubs "ridiculous nudge-nudge, wink-wink comments" and generally anything that will make Chris Jefferies look as weird as possible.

Jerry Hayes ("The hounding of Christopher Jeffries and anyone who is different") makes the excellent point that "[i]f [Mr Jefferies] is charged, British Justice assures him of a fair trial. But if he is not charged or acquitted, his life will never be the same again. He will be regarded as that strange, eccentric, blue rinsed loner, somehow connected with a death".

Finally, Enemies of Reason ("Chris Jefferies and trial by media") draws parallels with the character assassination and [the] targeting aspects of people's private lives" as already seen in "the trials by media undergone by Colin Stagg, Robert Murat, Barry George, the parents of Madeleine McCann and the first man to be accused of the Ipswich murders of 2006 (who was leater released without charge)".

Cliches of 2011 #1

2011-01-02T12:13:00.000Z

"Not everyone is obsessed with"...

Typical but by no means exclusive of right-wingers, this variant of "whataboutery" is the final cop-out used by those too blinkered by ideology, bigotry or religious zealotry to concede that their argument is all over the place.

Look at the way, for instance, it's often deployed by closet homophobes.

When the subject of sexual equality for all is raised and facts are spelt out about past or existing discrimination, the latent homophobe will not say something appalling in return, but will instead cling on to the lame "yeah but, anyway, not everyone is obsessed with gay rights" as their pathetic last resort.

"Not everyone is obsessed with..." can be perused whenever truths are starting to grate or when arguments have run dry over whichever subject doesn't suit your warped ideological worldview.

Low wages, inequality, the environment, human rights, misogyny, cruelty to animals, balooning transport fares, the cost of education, you name it. Not everyone is obsessed with 'it', no matter how wrong 'it' is, which might as well read "let's leave things as they are, because I actually quite agree with 'it', even though I haven't got the cojones to openly say so".

Of course, you'll find the people coming up with the above remark will probably not grasp the irony of them being obsessed with issues as vital as supporting angling or the abolition of speed limits.

Click here to read the Cliches of 2010.

2011- the predictions

2011-01-01T14:50:00.014Z

Culture:

After the arrival of the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, the saturated digital industry will come up with the iPoo, a new device that automatically updates your status on both Facebook and Twitter with a detailed report of your stools each time you go for a dump.

In the meantime, picking up on the trends of 2009 and 2010, conversations amongst friends will be even more centred around and dependent upon a hand-held digital device.

Cheryl Cole will give at least one teary-eyed television interview.

The weather:

Of course, the summer will be lined with hysterical articles about heatwaves, sizzling Britain and the hottest summer since last summer, while next winter it'll all be the coldest year since before Christ and where's-the-bleedin-grit.

The BBC:

2010 panned out with Britain's state TV starring a chief political editor who's a proud Former president of the Oxford University Conservative Association and National Chairman of the Young Conservatives; interviewers mauling anti-government demonstrators (see here); openly homophobic news coverage and taxpayer-funded racist comedies. And still the loonie righties allege that the BBC is a nest of biased "lefties". Like Goebbels once said, "a lie repeated thousands of times becomes a truth". Expect more of the same in 2011.

Expect news coverage to grind to a total halt for the whole of April and May 2011 and feelgood cliches that William and Kate "look lovely together" to reach saturation point.

The Daily Mail:

"Britain's moral guardians" will abort their second attempt at stoking mass hypochondria over the so-called "swine flu". After their unprecedented scaremongering fiasco of 2009 and their more timid recent efforts at the end of 2010, they'll just put the issue aside for a while again, waiting for a new virus to beef up their SCARY headlines.

Jan Moir will write at least one article on the subject of how she's so fed up with this world of celebrities therefore let's be obsessed about them. Needless to say, the contradiction will be lost upon her.

"Reports" bewailing anorexia and "those glossy magazine cover lines screaming at us at this time of year to detox" (see this) will sit right next to those announcing that "January is the prime-time for exchanging weight loss tips" (see this or this).

The Daily Express:

Headlines such as BRAVE PRINCE WILLIAM PLUCKS SPLINTER OUT or HAIRLOSS FIRM WANTS PRINCE WILLIAM AS SPOKESMAN will increase in the wake of the royal wedding, occasionally interspersed with rants about "the bureaucratic grip of the European Union".

The Sun:

EXCLUSIVE stories that Ed Balls, Dave Miliband and Alan Johnson are plotting against Ed Miliband will see the light of day almost as often as pictures of Sun babes.

Puns based on the words "Red" and "Ed" (see this for instance) will plunge new depths. Of course, Murdoch's hired guns will no doubt believe that they're being hilarious.

More articles about the "sexualisation of society" and the "pornification of our kids" (see this or this) will keep sandwiching Page Three. In the meantime, the concepts of "ridicule" and "hypocrisy" will still elude The Sun's newsroom.

Immigration:
Have you noticed how, until May 6 2010, the tabloids kept kicking and screaming as if the whole British landmass was about to sink under the weight of immigration? Then the Tories got in and the burning issue magically turned into a puny footnote. While David Cameron's at the helm, more of the same tame approach is guaranteed.

The Euro:
In line with every year since 2001, Europe's common currency will be declared "soon dead" by Telegraph editorials and Daily Mail headlines on a fortnightly basis.

Politics:
The Right - With news rolling in of hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs as the cuts start taking their toll, George Osborne and David Cameron will just put their favourite CD on, press the button that says REPEAT A-B and play "the cuts are fair", "tough decisions to rescue our public finances" and "we didn’t come into politics to make cuts" on a loop. Or perhaps they'll just get Danny Alexander to memorize and recite the poem in front of mummy and daddy.

The Left - In the meantime, the Opposition will offer valuable alternatives in the guise of tons of articles dissecting strategies while dissing and knocking fellow leftist groups. All done, of course, in the "spirit of unity". Oh, and don't forget the regular-as-clockwork rumours that Alan Johnson and Dave Miliband are plotting against Ed.

The LibDems - An opinion poll published in July 2011 will indicate that the party's 57 MPs, their close family and staff at LibDemVoice are the only people left in the country still willing to vote for the Coalition's junior partners.

Football:
Robbie Keane will move to at least three different clubs, including a brief loan spell at another London club that will last no longer than three months.

Aston Villa to face relegation.

Manchester United will net another Premier League, while in Europe the Champions League will be an all-Spanish affair with either Real Madrid or Barcelona FC to win it. Either way, the top football tosser of the year will be Jose Mourinho.

Happy 2011...

2010-12-31T18:32:00.000Z

How the Daily Mail peddles hatred against the jobless

2010-12-31T13:46:00.000Z

Distorting news and fuelling prejudice since 1896. And still getting away with it.

You can say what you want about the Daily Mail but "incoherent" they're not. For them, 2010 is drawing to a close exactly the same way it began: talking rubbish.

Look at the way this article misleads in order to fit the tabloid's own toxic agenda.

"The job refuseniks: How 750,000 of the dole queue have turned down or quit work" is the headline.

Of course, with no further details immediately at hand, the implication is that 750,000 of the current unemployed are taking the piss.

But a quick fact-check shows that the Daily Mail is deliberately distorting facts. The "750,000" people the right-wing tabloid is referring to are not at all from "the dole queue", let alone the current one, but they're a combination of:

- people who left jobs (or were fired for misconduct) who then tried to claim benefit but were caught out, fined and therefore denied benefits;

- people who refused job offers, even though the Daily Mail steers well clear of specifying why that was the case. Whether the applicants did not have access to transport, or child care, or any other reason, Britain's naffest tabloid doesn't think it matters. They're all scum, they're unlucky, kick'em while they're down.

Most importantly, the figures refer to the period between 2000 and 2010, that is to say 10 years, and NOT to the current "dole queue".

This is a crucial fact, because 750,000 people over a period of ten years are one thing and 750,000 people all in one go are another, yet the Daily Mail doesn't think it's worth specifying it at all until a brief mention in the second part of the article.

Now. People of a very superficial ilk like to sputter that Britain's tabloids are harmless and that they play no part in affecting (some would say poisoning) the country's cultural and political debate.

And yet, just think of the amount of people who don't have the time, the patience or the attention span to go past the poisonous headline that "750,000 of the dole queue have turned down or quit work".

Many will have interiorised the Mailesque belief that, yes, three quarter of a million dole recipients in this country are basically workshy vermin scum and don't deserve to be in receipt of any benefit.

You know what to do next time you've run out of Andrex.

The most annoying Xmas song ever...

2010-12-25T11:04:00.002Z

...Plus festive wishes...

In the next few days, the Very British practice of having to endure Christmas "hits" wherever you are (since early November at least) will finally come to an end. Until next year, of course.

And so a very Happy Xmas to all - in particular emergency staff, barmaids and barmen, 24/7 shop assistants, care workers and all those who didn't have a chance to book time off over the time of the year when you're most expected to be jolly, merry, twee and festive.

In the meantime, here's my own very personal Bottom Five:

1- Do They Know It's Christmas?, Band Aid
Imagine twenty or so egomaniacs each recording their own annoying Crimbo tune packaged as "save the starving", and then proceeding to condense the end products all into one and shove it down the nation's throats for generations to come. 'Painful' doesn't even begin to cover it.

2- Fairytale of New York, The Pogues Feat. Kirsty MacColl
As a former barman, receptionist and shop assistant, I feel for the millions of staff who have to endure this non-stop from November 1st onwards.

3- Merry Christmas Everyone, Shakin' Stevens
As a former barman, receptionist and shop assistant, I feel for the millions of staff who have to endure this non-stop from November 1st onwards.

4- Santa Claus is Coming Into Town, Michael Bolton
As a former barman, receptionist and shop assistant, I feel for the millions of staff who have to endure this non-stop from November 1st onwards.

5- Merry Xmas Everybody, Slade
As a former barman, receptionist and shop assistant, I feel for the millions of staff who have to endure this non-stop from November 1st onwards. Especially the bit at the end when Noddy Holder screams IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!! into the microphone. Grating.

Cable TV

2010-12-24T09:59:00.001Z

Rupert Murdoch couldn't have pulled off a better one even if he'd tried.

Much has been said and written about the Daily Telegraph sting job on Vince Cable and his surprising revelations on the coalition's internal conflicts and various issues including his "war on Mr Murdoch".

We also learnt that Cable has been stripped of his responsibilities for overseeing media and broadcasting companies, that he will no longer rule on the controversial Rupert Murdoch bid to take full control of BSkyB, and that his replacement is going to be Conservative Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Jeremy Hunt, a man whose views on Murdoch and his media empire appear to be very favourable to say the least.

Coincidence, the announcement was met with BSkyB's shares leaping like a frog on crack. You can guess who is the only person benefiting from all this.

What is Germany doing that we aren't?

2010-12-22T14:06:00.004Z

Germany has recovered from the recession faster than any other country. Here is why.

The days when Tony Blair was lecturing various EU countries on the importance of adopting the Anglo-Saxon model of beefed-up finance are now long gone.

When the biggest global recession in decades kicked in, Germany was able to weather the storm and recover much quicker and better than Britain, the US, or any other major Western economy.

Some of the reasons may be too complex for the scope of a blog post. Yet it's interesting that, while successive UK governments spent the last three decades actively pursuing overreliance on bullshit economy, Germany did not fall for short-termist solutions.

For one thing, not giving up on its manufacturing is certainly reaping the harvest now - look at how its booming export sales are proving the country's biggest asset as the Germans are getting out of recession faster than anyone else.

And so a number of legitimate questions arise. Why is it that after registering a slump of -4.7% last year, Germany is now forecast to end 2010 with a GDP growth of 3.6%, its fastest pace since reunification, while Britain is still finding its feet?

And why is it that while unemployment is still rising or stagnating in the US, Britain or other EU countries, the figures are going down fast and steady in Germany?

During the bubble years, Blair and Brown could at least boast that the UK's jobless figures were regularly lower than the rest of Europe. And it was true. Between 2000 and 2007, unemployment in Britain was never any higher than 5.5% (see this) while, in the same period, the German figures were regularly double that rate - between 8 and 10 per cent (see this).

Now look at the last two years. UK unemployment has overtaken Germany's at a hair-raising pace. While the jobless rate in Britain is now tickling 8 per cent, in Germany it decreased to 7.3 per cent at the start of 2010 and then further lowered to 6.7% in October (see this) - again, its best figures since reunification.

So what are the Germans doing that we're not, to the extent that many analysts are now openly talking of a "German Miracle"?

The answer lies in a policy that the German government adopted at the start of the crisis. It's called kurzarbeit and it literally means "short work". While other countries spent unprecedented sums on bailing out banks or dubious stimulus programmes, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government (at the time a coalition of centre-right CDU and centre-left SDP) took a unique gamble by spending huge sums bailing out its work force.

And that's because, under kurzarbeit, employers hit by the downturn are encouraged to keep their workers part-time rather than make them redundant. The Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) will cover up to 67% of lost wages and will also take care of national insurance and other contribution. The idea is that:

a) mass redundancies often mean a permanent loss of skilled work and specialised trade, especially in the industrial sector. By keeping workers active through a combination of part-time and training, the economy benefits the moment trade picks up - which is exactly what happened as Germany boomed in 2010;

b) the focus on employment and wages spared the country a vicious circle of mass unemployment leading to a drop in both tax revenue and consumer confidence - in turn leading to vast numbers of people defaulting on their mortgages and loans. In other words, as the money reaches consumers directly, it flows back into the market straightaway.

This may look expensive at first (£5.1bn a year), but it saved Germany a fortune in both welfare costs and bailing out banks.

Compare what Germany spent on their bail-out: 1.4% to 2.2% of gross domestic product (between €34bn and €52bn). In Britain it was a staggering 19.8%, almost a fifth of its GDP - and that's before the official cost was actually discovered to stand at an even higher £850bn.

Of course, the experiment is not without its critics. From the left, it's often said that Germany's recovery has taken place at the expense of the rising numbers of low-wage workers and unprecedented wage restraint. From the right, the objection that kurzabeit would simply lead to "a backlog of job cuts", to quote what the president of the German Bundesbank said last year.

And yet, time is showing that Germany's route to recovery is the correct one. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the kurzabeit scheme saved nearly 500,000 jobs in 2009 alone and two months ago the German Upper House Bundesrat decided to extend it until March 2012.

More recents news report that Germany's industrial sector is currently in need of 34,000 engineers and 23,000 factory workers.

Indeed, a German success story.

Stay placid

2010-12-20T14:55:00.007Z

Forget the tabloids. Here's the cavalry of "maverick" newspaper columnists coming to the rescue of government and corporate tax avoiders to brand protesters as the real enemy from within.

It is was only two years ago that Britain's newspapers were - almost in unison - kicking and screaming histerically at the super-rich and their corrupt Westminster mates "whose excesses dragged the country to the edge of bankruptcy".

Comments such as "never again are we going to be taken for a ride", "lessons-need-learning", and "why should the little people clean up the mess left by the powerful" were the order of the day in every newspaper.

And so it happens that, within less than 24 months, it's no longer the fault of the casino bankers, the corporate tax dodgers and their lapdog politicians.

In fact, they're not even the real powers that be. They're the defenseless victims, the "grown-ups", those actually in need of constant rescuing from the threat of "self-righteous" and "red-faced" "intoxicated anarchists" with "pumped-up rage" that "will achieve nothing" but inconveniencing "ordinary shoppers".

Seriously. Forget the tabloids. You read Britain's newspapers these days and it's as if the actual culprits behind the world's ills were students, anti-tax avoidance protesters and, of course, evil Julian Assange and his supporters.

Look at the amount of columnists who, for all their maverick posturing, toss-arguing, straw clutching and verbal meandering, always - invariably - end up as guardian dogs of the status quo.

What follows is a quick selection of "quality" newspaper articles from the last ten days.

The morning of the tuition fees vote in the Commons, the Independent's Steve Richards didn't feel the need to analyse, dissect or criticise the government's new tuition fees politicy. He didn't even say if he agreed or not. No. His energies were all spared for the protests which "have a whiff of urgent glamour", and "will have made no practical difference whatsoever". Basically, years of broadsheets lecturing on "generation apathy" and look who's apathetic now.

That still wasn't quite as lame as Howard Jacobson who, a couple of days later, boasted in the same paper: "I am temperamentally averse to demonstrations [...]. Any more than five human beings believing the same thing and congregating to say so are bound to be on a course that will lead to trouble. We are safe only when we act individually".

Or Toby Young in the Telegraph. "The student protesters are morally indistinguishable from the merchant bankers", he spouted. Are they really? Except that you'd be hard pressed if you could spot a single article where the same Mr Young uttered a word against the bankers. He'd rather go for the soft target, would he not, whether it's students on tuition fees or the spontaneous movement whose only request is that the superrich too don't get preferential treatment when it comes to tax in the age of "we're-all-in-this-together".

Because what they're doing is, "they're hurting ordinary shoppers [...], the poorest and most vulnerable", says Young. Who then follows with the predictable dollop of whataboutery: "why don’t [the protesters] patrol the streets of their home towns giving food and blankets to the homeless [instead]?".

Then there's Christina Patterson back at the Independent, as we already discussed on Saturday. Her particular targets, the celebrity supporters of Wikileaks and their "delicious sense of self-righteousness". Says she.

Nothing, however, as the supreme pontificating coming from Mary Ann Sieghart who, after three or four paragraphs of logical swirls, eventually brands all demonstrators as "anarchists". Whether Wikileaks, the students or the anti-tax avoidance protesters, they're all "intoxicated by a spirit of anarchy" - cue "a bunch of students in balaclavas [...] who go round smashing windows" - but no, she's not tarring them all with the same brush.

All that intellectual energy and all that newspaper ink to simply say: young people, we liked you more when you just watched Big Brother or the X-Factor. Now keep your head down again and stay supine.

Also on the subject: "Stay stupid".

The UK's worst politics programme

2010-12-19T15:17:00.002Z

They say the BBC is looking for programmes to axe. In which case, what better place to start than 'This Week'?

If you thought you knew the real meaning of cringeworthy, then you may want to think again. Last Thurday's episode of Andrew Neil's "political" show on BBC One plumbed depths previously unknown to man.

The combination of dogs from Britain's Got Talent performing tricks in the studio, Quentin Letts and Kevin Macguire doing a stomach-churning impersonation of Downturn Abbey, and Andrew Neil's profoundly unfunny jokes hanging in the studio like a toxic cloud was just too much to take.

Some people may have long wondered what the purpose of This Week is.

Is its lighthearted tone meant to draw in viewers that are not normally interested in politics? Then wouldn't the 11:35 pm slot defeat the object? But suppose it was given prime time, its relentless bombardment of annoying in-jokes and cryptic backslapping would be enough to make most people turn the telly off within minutes.

Because the thing is, someone should tell Andrew Neil that he is not funny. But really not funny, not one bit.

Last Thursday was the first time I had the misfortune to watch This Week in ages and the words "Alan" and "Partridge" sprang to mind - as in, the type of egomaniacal televisual bigwig that Steve Coogan intended to parody. Just think your most cringeworthy family member churning out unfunny jokes at Christmas gatherings catapulted on national television. That's almost as bad as Andrew Neil.

With light entertainment ruled out, it's obvious that This Week is not about in-depth analyses either. Hapless guests (including regulars Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo) are lucky if they manage to open their mouth for five seconds before Andrew Neil chokes the conversation again with one of his "jokes".

It's obvious that the producers' script is "avoid anything remotely engaging at all costs", which is why anything that isn't a soundbite or extremely shallow gets trampled over by the presenter's industrial-size ego.

They say that state-funded TV often appeals to the lowest common denominator in order to compete with commercial television, but it's hard to think of any other channel, even Five, ever commissioning something like This Week without the words "commercial" and "suicide" flashing in big lights as the credits roll.

Cliches of 2010 #6

2010-12-19T13:18:00.005Z

"Why can't Britain cope with snow while other countries can?"

Because it's not true. Bad weather regularly disrupts travel and normal services in a number of countries, not just Little England.

You hear it time and again, each and every winter, when heavy snowfall is met by headlines like chaos, BIG FREEZE or COLDEST [month] SINCE RECORD BEGAN.

Or, if not "since record began", then maybe the coldest for 20/50/90 years, or since 1962, depending on the article you read. Or, perhaps, even, "AA's busiest night for breakdowns in 25 years" - anything as long as it's a superlative sentence.

And the panicky headlines are invariably accompanied by the usual "Why can't Britain cope with snow?" and "why do we grind to a halt at the first snowflake and other countries don't"? Google those words and you'll find the very same question cropping up dozens of times and not just from this uber-cold 2010 or 2009, but all the time.

And yet it wouldn't take much to clock that weather-related self-flagellation is complete nonsense.

While it's obviously true that the weather is being incredibly disruptive, similar levels of chaos (and casualties, in some cases) are reported across France, the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia as well as throughout Spain, Italy and also Eastern Europe.

Last year was a similar picture, with a nasty cold snap forcing airports to shut, not just in the UK, but also in other countries like Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Northern Italy, etc.

Why some people want to believe that whatever happens on their doorstep is only happening to them and them alone remains one of the mysteries of Clicheland.

PREVIOUS CLICHES:
#5 "Students should engage in the democratic vote...".
#4 "Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top".
#3 "There are jobs out there if you really want one".
#2 "The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".
#1 "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man"

Stay stupid

2010-12-18T13:35:00.000Z

Nothing seems to irk the country's hacks more than a celebrity expressing a political opinion.

We binge on hundreds of celebrities, some more worthless than others, while we laugh at their imperfections, dimpled thighs and sweaty armpits as sported by Heat, the Sun or the Daily Mail.

We love to remark on how thick, shallow and uneducated they are. We sneered at Jade Goody's "pig ignorance", laughed at Paris Hilton's dumb quotes and we frowned at how detached from the real world the superrich and the superfamous are.

But then the moment a celebrity displays the tiniest existence of grey stuff between their ears, for some reason, we go apeshit and we scoff and pour scorn at them.

Whether it's Eric Cantona making a stand against the banks, Colin Firth criticising the government over tuition fees, or Jemima Khan defending Wikileaks, the media predators just won't let them get away with it. Go back to your pampered world. Stay thick, stay shallow and stay supine, is the warning. [Incidentally, note how the toss-arguers always invariably end up siding with the powers that be].

Jan Moir kicked off the proceedings yesterday with an extremely bitchy swipe at "darling Jemima. She was pictured looking particularly fabulous at an earlier Assange hearing; standing on the court steps with her blonde hair flying and her big liberal heart beating fit to burst", wrote the right-wing columnist.

Today is the turn of the Independent to pull her up on her quote that she shouldn't be called a "socialite". How dare she say she isn't. Oh the scorn, the tutting, the disdain.

Christina Patterson goes even further. In one of the most convoluted opinion columns in living memory, she insinuates that "the very beautiful, and very rich, and very famous for her famous boyfriends, Jemima Khan", may not be genuinely interested in "the cause of freedom of speech".

"It's also possible that [Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger] did the calculations before making the deal", sentenced Patterson. "On the one side: beauty, money, glamour. On the other: 'rock star' looks, a delicious sense of self-righteousness, and the aphrodisiac of massive, world-leader-embarrassing power".

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. Here's the message to every celebrity: show an interest in something and the papers will pick you to pieces.

Jan Moir's playground whataboutery

2010-12-17T15:11:00.008Z

Has the Daily Mail's star columnist got cognitive problems?

You can always rely on quality analyses from the Daily Mail.

Like today's column by Jan Moir. Remember her? The woman who last year prompted record numbers of complaints for performing homophobic rituals on Stephen Gately's grave and then landed the 2009 Stonewall Bigot of the Year Award.

The thing with Moir is that she is also desperate to win the Mail's Biggest Bully Award. What lets her down, however, is the flimsiness of her writing.

Look at the playground-brand of whataboutery she's deploying in her feeble attempt at character assassination on Jemima Khan.

According to Moir, Khan's crime is that she supports Wikileaks' Julian Assange but not Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders or US Pastor Terry Jones, the religious nut who thinks publicly burning the Qur'an is a good deed.

And that's not all. Apparently Jemima Khan should never have said the following to critical journos:

"Calling me “a socialite” is such a lazy way for journalists to undermine me and the Assange defence".

Moir thinks this makes Jemima a hypocrite. "That's free speech for you babe. Freedom of information", the homophobe writes.

Which makes you wonder if she can actually read and understand texts properly. Because Khan's sentence has got fuckall to do with free speech or lack thereof. Jemima Khan didn't say "silence those critics, ban them or burn them at the stake". She just said that that particular criticism directed at her was "lazy".

The good news is that if this is the current state of Britain's right-wing tabloids, then we really do have plenty of reasons to cheer up. Perhaps having a government that tickles their fancy is actually sapping their critical spirit.

To finish, Jan Moir's icing on the cake: "But the rest of us reserve the right not to take [Jemima Khan] quite as seriously as she takes herself". Yes, you braindead idiot, that must be why you wrote an entire "opinion column" about her.

Feeling their pain

2010-12-17T06:57:00.002Z

The parallels between the plight of today's LibDem activists and that of many Labour supporters during the Blair years.

Contribution by Councillor Bob Piper*

Ed Miliband’s appeal for those Liberal Democrats dismayed by the coalition with the Conservatives may attract some waverers, but I doubt it will lead to the complete demise of the Lib Dems that some people are predicting.

Personally I have a sympathy with those on the radical wing of the Lib Dems who feel betrayed by Clegg, Alexander and co. They will have spent years listening to their leaders in opposition decrying “the two main parties” and promising nirvana if only they were in power. Ok, most will surely have accepted that getting power in their own right was not achievable in the short term, but they hung on to the belief that they could hold the balance of power in a coalition. And so it came to pass. But I doubt many Lib Dem members thought that entering a coalition would result in their MPs accepting a complete u-turn on issues like tuition fees. Accepting a review of Trident is one thing, they may even have accepted that the Tories and Labour, whichever they joined up with, would combine to ensure Trident was renewed. But to see their leaders vociferously arguing for a measure which they had spent over 10 years decrying… that was not what they were expecting.

The reason I have some sympathy is that some of us in the Labour Party have been there and bought the t-shirt. We spent the best part of two decades on platforms condemning the Thatcherite market-led NHS reforms, the privatisation of public services, the anti-trade union laws, the Private Finance Initiative etc. Then we suddenly discovered that these things were not going to be reversed, but worse, they were actually at the heart of Blair’s New Labour party. I remember only a few months in to the Labour Government of 1997, when the euphoria was still pumping through Labour veins, moving a resolution at UNISON’s Affiliated Political Fund conference calling for a halt to PFI schemes. The resolution was passed but was opposed by two leading lights of the union, Dave Anderson and Ann Picking (both destined to become Labour MPs) which made me uneasy at the time. And also opposed by Keith Vaz who, without a hint of shame or irony, told the conference that previously we had quite rightly opposed ‘Tory PFI’ …this was different… it was ‘New Labour PFI’!!!

And this was years before Blair’s wars and infatuation with Bush, or plans for 90-day internment, or ID cards and all of the other authoritarian post-9/11 measures. You know, those things that Ed Miliband confessed were errors or misjudgments during his leadership bid.

So, if there are Lib Dems out there thinking of packing it all up, my message to you is don’t despair. Clegg may be just a blip, a small hiccup in the long history of your party. Stick to your principles and one day you may be secretly stifling a smug grin as speaker after speaker stands up to denounce Clegg and his ilk and all of their crypto-Tory machinations.

In closing though, comrades, I have no wish to form a coalition with you. We should both want to trample the Tories in to the dirt and ensure a permanent democratic socialist/social democrat political future for Britain. A strong Liberal Democrat opposition to what you perceive as the excesses of a Labour Government should be the short term aim, not the shabby little compromise you now find yourselves locked in to.

Of course, for those who really don’t have the stomach to endure five years of the current horror show… I’m told our membership is still open to applications.

*This article was originally posted at Councillor Bob Piper.

Happy nation

2010-12-16T12:23:00.002Z

Warning: look away if you can't take any doom'n'gloom

Here's the list of Christmas gift delivered to your doorstep by Santa Cameron. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics yesterday:

- official unemployment up to 2.5 million people (first rise since the spring);

- the number of people who have to switch to part-time work because they could not find a full-time job keeps going up, now standing at 1.16 million, "the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992";

- there were 158,000 redundancies in the three months to October 2010, up 15,000 on the quarter. The figures are set to soar, as around 100,000 redundancy letters are expected to be sent to local authority staff within the next month.

- inflation is up to 3.3% (or 4.7% RPI), particularly due to a record hike on food and non-alcoholic drinks. And with the VAT to rise in January (more about its impact here), that's bound to get worse, especially when coupled with the news that earnings have gone up by 2.2 per cent (though if you personally know anyone who can say they've had a pay rise in the last 12 months, do drop us a line).

PS: On a positive note, this blog salutes one good thing the LibDems have achieved while in power: the end of detention of children in immigration centres - one of the most appalling policies that Labour implemented while in power. Credit when due.

LibDems take advice from US Republicans!

2010-12-15T15:08:00.000Z

Bush's senior policy adviser now cited as the LibDem's new oracle. Seriously.

It really says something when the Liberal Democrats' official organ is proudly sporting the words of a US Republican "urging Barack Obama to be more like Nick Clegg".

For the record, the remains of the LibDems are boastfully quoting Michael Gerson, former senior policy advisor to President George W Bush between 2000 and 2006 - that is, someone sitting right at the core of the lethal (literally) neo-con Chain of Command during both the Iraq mess and the build-up to the biggest financial crash since 1929.

Of course, if pressed, Nick Clegg and his dwindling rank of faithfuls would probably tell you that, no, it's Barack Obama that's turned conservative and that, yes, the Bushite Republicans have magically become "progressive" (one of Clegg's favourite words). Just like the previously-evil Tories have blossomed overnight into Clegg's "progressive" wet dream.

And then the LibDems would probably add that, even though George W Bush's tax cuts for upper-income, capital-owning households were the trigger for America's worst record on income inequality since the 1920s, the Republicans were still good at stimulating social mobility.

And yeah, mobility, George W Bush certainly managed.

In the sense that it was thanks to his atrocious inititatives such as the Ownership Society that millions of low-wage Americans moved to homes that they couldn't afford and from which they were soon kicked out. They moved alright.

Not quite social, but still mobility.

The Amazing Transformation of Ben Mitchell

2010-12-15T12:38:00.002Z

The worst casting decision ever made?

Thank god for the minds behind Eastenders for bringing light entertainment in the midst of this bleak Autumn of Discontent.

Cue the ridiculous return of Ben Mitchell and the several million laughters that saluted the poorest casting in living memory; so poor that the only feasible explanation can be the casting directors' cravings for the next British Comedy Award.

Look at the picture and tell us if that isn't pure genius. The same kid who walked away looking like a child, chubby, fresh-faced and soft-skinned, is supposed to come back a mere four months later looking eight years older, sideburns and all, and with a voice about four octaves lower than its previous helium-like incarnation.

We've all heard of growth spurts, but this is something else - as if good old Ben Mitchell had been force-fed industrial quantities of the stuff Tour de France riders are too often caught guzzling for breakfast.

After the botched job with Lauren Branning and the laughing stock that is Ben Mitchell's recasting, expect Lady Gaga to stand in for Ian Beale. The producers at EastEnders probably think she's his spitting image.

Berlusconi survives confidence vote

2010-12-14T12:50:00.002Z

Last month we predicted the end of Silvio Berlusconi.

Consumed by scandals, a stagnant economy, as well as increasing defections within his own right-wing coalition, it really looked like the tycoon's days in office were numbered.

Wrong. Minutes ago the Italian PM survived a vote of confidence in both chambers. Literally, by the scruff of the neck, thanks to a few opposition MPs who stood their party up (literally going AWOL, imagine that in Westminster) and an unxpected extra handful of votes in favour.

Like my good old dad said, "You can never write Berlusconi off. He's like a cat with nine lives". Nine lives, as well as the fattest chequebook in Italy.

Allegations that several MPs, who had publicly announced they would vote against the government, were "cajoled" (or even "threatened") into realigning are gaining weight. This morning, opposition parties submitted to the courts "legal evidence" that a "trading operation" went on between Berlusconi's party and individual deputies.

In any other western democracy, the government would have some major explaining to do. In Italy it will just blow a raspberry.

[Photo : Italian politics in action this morning - from la Repubblica]

Pope in Birmingham cost £280,000

2010-12-13T14:46:00.002Z

That, the local cuts and the new library: where there's a will there's a way?

The Birmingham Post reports today that Pope Benedict's one-day visit to Birmingham last September will cost the public purse £280,000 - expected to be funded from the local police budget. According to the Post, "[t]he bill has left the force’s contingency budget short of cash for the rest of the year".

Of course you could argue that is nothing in a city where the pain of the Coalition cuts will be felt more than anywhere else, with £330 million (a whopping 28 per cent of all non-schools services from the council) set to be cut between 2011 and 2014.

On the subject, take a peek at this excellent piece by Paul Dale. Compare and contrast. The same council that is having to cut £330m worth of services is also struggling to find £590m (plus £6 million a year in interests) to cover the costs of the currently under construction brand new central library in Centenary Square.

Who knows. Perhaps the logic may be that, if you soon find yourself jobless and with front line services mangled to round it all off, at least you'll be able to cheer yourself up by reading books about the Pope's visit. In the new central library.

A 1p tax on text messages?

2010-12-13T13:27:00.000Z

Almost 100 billion SMSs were sent last year in Britain alone. If it's true that the deficit matters, then do your maths.

In an interview in today's Guardian, union leader Bob Crowe mentions in passing that he'd "put a 1 pence tax on every text message that's sent in Britain", arguing that "[the measure] would nearly wipe out half the deficit".

Crowe may be a little over optimistic on the figures, but the idea is certainly spot on.

Last year, 96.8 billion text messages were sent across Britain, an increase of 23% on 2008 - and that's without counting 600 million picture messages on top.

The Office for National Statistics said that "[t]he current budget (excluding financial interventions) showed a deficit of £7.1 billion in October 2010".

A significant portion of that money could be recovered in one fell swoop, as it's highly unlikely an extra 1p per text would impact significantly on the billions of SMSs being sent each day. It'd be certainly infinitely less intrusive than many of the austerity measures this government is taking.

If it's true that Britain's financial emergency can warrant half a million people being made redundant and cuts to the tune of £330m in councils like Birmingham, then what is an extra 1p per text or picture message if it can rake in (at the very worst) over £1bn in just a year?

Tabloids, baying mobs and Charlie Gilmour

2010-12-12T14:58:00.009Z

Aware that public sympathy is not on their side, the coalition and their media need all the red herrings they can get hold of.

It's that time of the year again when Britain needs its fix of collective hysteria.

Like two years ago when BLOOD OF A SOCIAL WORKER became the backdrop to our lives, and last summer when the phantom PC BAN ON THE ENGLISH FLAG provoked widespread rage, the baying mob is back - whipped up by the country's tabloids - pitchfork and torches, gnashers grinding and white foam building up at the corner of the mouth.

Like foreigners and single mums, social workers and PC councils, 21-year-old Charlie Gilmour is already learning what it means to be the target of tabloid-inspired scapegoating and witch-hunt in this country.

Within hours of the Sun and the Daily Mail revealing his name and personal information, the bloke who was photographed swinging like a fool from the Union Jack at the Cenotaph became the focus of cyber lynchmobs baying for his blood.

Look at the succession of Facebook groups that sprung up like mushrooms.

Jail Charlie Gilmour, Never employ Charlie Gilmour, Charlie Gilmour is a Cnut! (sic), CHARLIE GILMOUR WANTS SHOOTING, Prosecute and imprison Charlie Gilmour!, I hope Charlie Gilmour dies slowly very soon, Charlie Gilmour - Vilest brat in Britain!, Charlie Gilmour is a disgrace to his country JAIL HIM!, Charlie Gilmour needs to be fucking hung.

And that's without counting the hate-filled comments and calls for "revenge" on the tabloids' websites: displays of pure loathing scary enough to make the Wicker Man look like In The Night Garden.

Overnight this Charlie Gilmour turned into the most hated man in Britain, an "evil man" who should die a slow death, be hung, shot and devoured alive by a pack of rottweilers with advanced rabies.

And why? Because he swung from the Cenotaph. An incredibly idiotic thing to do, if you ask me. An ignorant and disrespectful act. One that, if anything, gave ammunitions to those who already hate demonstrators by default.

But, seriously, have we really lost our minds that we can get so worked up to the point of readily dispensing death wishes so publicly and light-heartedly?

What is it with this country that some people get more exercised by symbols than they do when political and corporate abuse vandalises their lives on a regular basis?

Why is it that people can go nuts - literally - over a rich kid swinging from a flag and not even blink when stories pile up of unwarranted police violence against protesters? Where's the outrage when a disabled demonstrator is pulled from his wheelchair and dragged around by the police not once, but twice?

"How dare you insult your country", writes the Sun. Fair enough. But where are the cries of disservice to the reputation of British democracy and where's the bile when the police are caught lying through their teeth in order to cover up some of their most thuggish behaviour?

And why does the baying mob get so incensed by the fact that Charlie's dad (Pink Floyd's David Gilmour) is so rich, but then they don't mind that they themselves will lose jobs, struggle with cuts and much higher living costs courtesy of a government where 18 out of 23 members of the cabinet are millionaires and aristocrats? No outrage there? Where's the scorn poured at "privileged boys who will not be hit by the crisis" when you really need it?

Charlie Gilmour would've done an infinitely better job if he'd stayed at home. But there's no law that makes joining protesters who are less well-off than you a crime. And, come to think of it, no legal cap on protesters' income either.

The Coalition and their mates in the media know public sympathy is not on their side. In their desperate quest for red herrings to shift the focus of the discussion from what really matters, they need all the Charlie Gilmours they can get hold of.

Nothing, at the end of the day, is more threatening to a government than peaceful mass demonstrations.

Cliches of 2010 #5

2010-12-12T11:16:00.002Z

"Students should engage in the democratic vote instead of protesting".

But that's what they did!

The majority of students voted LibDem at the last general election. According to a YouGov poll published in May (see here), a stunning 45 per cent of the student vote went to the Liberals, making Nick Clegg and Vince Cable's party the firm favourite in campuses up and down the country.

And that's why students and perspective students are fuming. They think all democratic doors have been slammed in their faces. When Tony Blair u-turned on tuition fees in 2003-04, students turned out in droves to support the only mainstream party that still actively campaigned to scrap university fees.

Now that the LibDems too humiliated millions who cast their vote in good faith, it's hardly surprising that many no longer see any point in the democratic process. Cue the repeated protests. Cue the anger.

And they get even angrier when they hear patronising sermons that Thursday's vote in the Commons is true democracy in action. That's the will of the majority and "put up or shut up".

However, what is democratic in passing bills thanks to the same MPs who - only months before - asked for a mandate to do the exact opposite once in office, I'll leave it to you to work out. I can't get my head round it.

PREVIOUS CLICHES:
#4 "Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top".
#3 "There are jobs out there if you really want one".
#2 "The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".
#1 "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".