Riots: Quote of the Day

From the Telegraph and Daily Mail

Looters formed an orderly queue outside JD Sports.

Only in Britain huh?

Amy Winehouse - posts from the past

I think Amy Winehouse's record sales are about to go through the roof given her untimely death due to overdose. Anyhow, here's some posts from the past.

Before Heroin - 9th April 2007

Sticking with the music theme of the last post, I;ve just seen Channel 4 News run a piece about Amy Winehouse and whether she should be up for the Mercury Music Prize or not because she's a smackhead.

It's worth noting how bloody good the critically acclaimed 2003 album Frank actually was and who she was before she became a household name because she likes to chase the dragon. This is "Fuck me Pumps", and I'm sure we all know the type of girls she's singing about, not to mention the mild irony given what's happened to her.

YouTube is still being slow, give it a chance.

Anyway, I'm not sure whether "Back to Black" will win the Mercury Prize tonight, but comparing this girl to Coldplay (as Nich Starling did last week) is way of the mark musically and lyrically. Shame about the smack.

Quick Saturday Observation - 25th August 2007 (horribly prescient)

The UK's own Janis Joplin in waiting?

N.B. Personally I think her first album is infinitely better than Rehab.

Today probably marks the birth of music legend. Whether she deserves to be one or not will be a matter of personal taste.

Perspective

Prime Minister: Tony Blair
Allegation: Accused of modifying government policy relating to tobacco advertising in sports in return for a donation of £1 million to his political party
Truth Status: Not proven - opinions on truth dependent on personal prejudices. Donation eventually returned (although modified policy remained in force)
What Opponents Said: Resign
Political Status: Survived and won following two elections.

Prime Minister: Tony Blair
Allegation: Along with his Director of Commmunication accused of lying to Parliament by embelishing and "sexing up" the case for the Iraq War. Presure intensified by the sudden, mysterious death of whistleblower leading to multiple inquiries and conspiracy theories.
Truth Status: Not proven - opinions on truth dependent on personal prejudices.
What Opponents Said: Resign
Political Status: Survived and won following election.

Prime Minister: Tony Blair
Allegation: That peerages and knighthoods were offered and exchanged for loans and donations to the Labour Party. Staff in Downing Street including the Prime Minister questioned by Police.
Truth Status: Not proven - opinions on truth dependent on personal prejudices.
What Opponents Said: Resign
Political Status: Survived

Prime Minister: David Cameron
Allegation: That he previously employed someone who has since resigned, who may have - as yet to be proven but alleged by a whistle-blower who has suddenly died - acted criminally prior to his employment; and to have met with multiple times on both personal and business terms (in keeping with his two predecessors), the Chief Executive of a newspaper business.
Truth Status: What exactly is the allegation? Opinion will depend on personal prejudices.
What Opponents Said: Resign
Political Status: To Be Confirmed (oddly)

Update: First example courtesy of Alan in the comments.

Election by September?

Sometimes you just happen to be in the right place at the right time to overhear something and then you have to make a quick judgement about what you hear and who said it. This morning is such an occasion so I offer the following health warning:

** This post is rampant speculation based on things heard and observed **

OK, that said, I got on my train this morning into London and sat on a bank of six chairs where three men were already sitting. They were chatting in a manner that suggested they knew each other quite well and possibly worked together. The discussion was audible but in hush tones.

It was evident quite quickly that the topic of discussion was News International. One of the men, who I'm sure I recognised from the press room at a Tory conference said,

"The only reason Rebekah is still there is because she knows where all the bodies are buried"

At this point, having referred to someone by first name only there was a look from one of the three to the man who uttered the words, and then the same man did that thing you do with your eyes to indicate something elsewhere... in this case... me. In other words it was a "shut the fuck up" with his eyes.

So anyway, the journey continues and the bloke that did the eyes starts to read his Metro. In the front page, top corner of today;s Metro is a box that says something along the lines of "Sun and Sunday Times now pulled into scandal". The "eyes guy" points to it and nudges the one who referred to "Rebekah" by first name and the following was said,

Yeah. They'll be an election in two months when the rest comes out.

Now, as I said at the beginning, this post carries a health warning. The only reason I posted it was because of the way in which someone was indicated to shut up because I was sitting there.

Make of it what you will.

Note: For those interested in reading other posts by me, I am now a contributer over at Dale & Co.

This is a gay club for gay people...we'll have no straight ones here

Let's play a little game shall we. Imagine, if you will that you're a Tory councillor and you went out one night to a nightclub to see someone perform. Imagine to that you were standing in the queue waiting patiently to pass the bouncers and get through the door.

Whilst in the queue you noticed that they were quite a few gay couples queuing too, so, you get out your mobile phone, you fire up Twitter and you tell your 6000 or so followers that,

Resent the number of gay people in the nightclub queue. If you want to see [insert performers name] BUGGER OFF SOMEWHERE ELSE.

What do you think the screaming Left would be saying on Twitter? It wouldn't be long before you'd probably be "under pressure" from Leftie bloggers to quit. "Evidence!" they would scream of the vicious evil hatred of equality and sexuality differences.

OK, game over, now let's shoot back into reality just a few hours ago to see what a Labour councillor and former NUS President said last night.

Now..... personally I don't really have a problem with the comment in terms of its content and point.* What I do have a problem with is the inherent hypocrisy that exists within the comment given who is making it. You see, it illustrates wonderfully everything that is wrong with identity-based politics.

If you're going to go down the route of championing the rights and equal treatments of social groups, whether it be based on gender, who you have sex with, or skin colour, then you really ought to be consistent.

For example, if you're going to champion women and fight against sexism, then being sexist towards men isn't really going to put your argument on the moral high ground. Likewise, if you've been listed as one of the "50 most powerful gay people in British politics" it's probably not a good idea to start slagging off straight people.

I doubt of course that such hypocritical dickheadness will result in any newspapers article calling for this particular councillor (also tipped as a future Cabinet minister) to resign or apologise for being heterophobic - mainly because there is no such thing as heterophobia just as it not possible for a white person to experience racism.

* UPDATE: Just so it's clear here, I don't think Wes Streeting should be apologising for being "nasty" to straight people because I do actually understand his sentiment. The issue is (a) what would be his reaction if you reversed the words and a Tory councillor said them, and (b) the act of doublethink required on Wes Streeting's part to make such a comment in the first place.

Blogging has been light and will remain so...

Apologies for the lack of posts, the new role I mentioned a couple of months ago has now started in earnest so blogging is now taking very much a back seat whilst I get to grip with all sorts of Amazon cloudy type things.

However, if you're really bored and want some amusement I strongly advise reading the recent woes of Tim Ireland over at Bloggerheads and his battle with the Times Higher Education Supplement who seemingly decided to use the name "Bloggerheads" for a column or something.

It really chuckled me when I read it on the train the other day. Back in a month or so probably.

Will SamCam catch the "Dreamscape Flight" home?

You have to love a bit of mindless churnalism from the mainstream media, right? Especially when they fail to spot a rather obvious joke and then palm it off as something that is true. So here's something to make you chuckle - well maybe.

On Saturday, Guido Fawkes posted that,

the PM was on a crack-of-dawn flight to Ibiza this morning. He paid for premium boarding. Sam flew out yesterday, again on Easyjet taking the baby but leaving the rest of the kids at home. She also took Friday’s Easyjet 3043 which leaves Stansted at 6 a.m. and is know[sic] as the “Sunrise flight” in tribute to the legendary rave organisation.

On Sunday, the Daily Mail wrote up that,

The Prime Minister flew out on the 6am easyJet flight 3043 from Stansted – known as the ‘Sunrise flight’ in tribute to the legendary rave organisation which organised all-night dance music parties in the countryside of southern England during the late Eighties.

Whilst the Daily Telegraph noted that,

This time the Camerons are understood to have taken Easyjet's 6am departures from Stansted - known as the "Sunrise flight" in tribute to the raves of the 1990s.

At some point you would've thought they might have done their research on that little "tribute" and realised that it's a reference to event promoters, the PR officer of which was one Paul Staines aka errrr Guido Fawkes.

You might have thought the hacks would've also noticed that Sunrise stopped in 1993, two years before Easyjet were even formed, and 6 years before they started flying to Ibiza. Or maybe, just maybe they would've checked the flights to Ibiza and spotted the lack of choice about flying times?

It's either 6am (landing around 10am local time) or nearer 10pm (landing around 2am local time) - a no-brainer on which is preferable especially when you have baby in tow.

Yes indeed, apparently the "Fourth Estate" genuinely believes an early morning flight to Ibiza in 2011, on a route that first appeared in 1999, is nicknamed after one of very many many raves that went on a decade earlier that just so happens to have had a PR officer who was also the source of the claim of the "tribute" nickname.

Anyone with a half a brain ought to have spotted the rave reference was a piss-take, so I believe the appropriate words in the contemporary Interweb lexicon are "epic fail".

Incidentally, should any hacks be reading this, the late night flight to Ibiza is named the "Dreamscape Flight" in tribute to a place where ecstasy chomping ravers fall asleep whilst listening to music at 200 bpm.... honestly.

Dear Prime Minister... you're talking bollocks

I see our dearly beloved Prime Minister has made a passionate defence over the International Development aid budget. This was after the Daily Mail woke up to an argument the some made even before the Coalition was formed that you cannot credibly call for austerity at home and talk about tough times whilst simultaneously ring-fencing and increasing how much money you piss away to foreign countries in aid.

Now naturally, the knee-jerk reaction to making this sort of argument is that you are in some way "callous". One of the other thing you hear is that we're a rich country and so should do it. To that I say bullshit. We're not a rich country, what we are is in fact a country that has less debt that countries we're giving money we don't have away too. If you're operating in the red and giving away money to others in the red then you're not rich at all, you're just skint and shuffling credit around.

The fact is, there is nothing callous about reeling in aid spending whilst you get yourself back on your feet. As I said back in March 2010, if Cameron or whoever stood up and said "you know what, we're in a bit of strife ourselves at the moment, and we really can't afford to do this right now" everyone in the country of the non-tribal idiot persuasion would, I imagine, nod and say "fair enough". After all, if you had £1000 and you're total bill were £1000 you;re not going to say "I think I'll give £100 to charity".

It is not callous, it is not uncaring, it is simply deferral until you're have a sound footing to start doing it again.

We've heard a lot about cuts in the last years. Some of it has been true, some of it hasn't. The thing is it doesn't matter either way, if people think their losing something at home whilst pumping money we don;t have abroad to the same cut value they're not going to be up in arms of outrage if politicians say "actually we;re going to server you, not those for the moment".

David Cameron's obsession with detoxifying the Tory-brand is blinding his judgement. If he just took a moment to lead instead of following what he thinks would be the outcome he would, I think, find that much of the country would follow him and respect him.

It's a very simple question with an even simpler one word answer. Do you give money to charity when you have none? You'll be hard pressed to find anyone who says yes I think. Sadly though I don't think Cameron is strong enough to take that view. He likes to talk the talk about making "tough decisions" when it comes to his own country, but doesn't have the balls to do it when it comes to others.

Now before anyone does predictably call me callous and uncaring I say this. I'm not saying that foreign aid should be scrapped. What I'm saying is that we should only be spending on it when we can actually afford to do so, and not at the expense of whatever spending can be achieved at home. Get the finances and house in order first, then come back to the issue later.

Through the human rights looking glass

Morning all, I've been rather busy this week tying up loose ends and projects before starting the new role I mentioned a few weeks ago (long notice period you see). Anyhow, I have but one question this morning and it can be summed up in just three letter.

W.... T.... F?

So..I heard about this potential story the other day and thought much the same but never really thought it would end as it has. I, rather naively you might think, thought common sense might prevail.

I am of course talking about the news that a man who was convicted of burglary and dangerous driving resulting in an eight month prison sentence has been released after a month after winning an Appeal Court claim on the grounds that sending him to prison breached his human right to family life as he was the sole carer of his kids.

I must admit I;m still having a bit of trouble computing this, and hopefully more coffee will help. Apparently the affect of Daddy going to jail on the kids is now more important than the justice or victims of his offences. Now.. I don;t know about you, but I would've thought seeing Daddy going to jail for doing something wrong might actually be an important lesson to the kids of what happens when you break the law, but apparently not.

You might also be asking "errr where's the mother?"... she's not dead or anything. The five kids have been staying with her at the weekends for the last month and at the burglars sister's during the week. Apparently though that wasn't good enough better to free the guy huh?

Now here we have, once again, the irritating reality of the "human rights" agenda, but also we have a brilliant illustration of the problem of determining rights on the basis of holding the quality of "human" rather than the quality of "being a citizen of civil society".

You see, if you think about it, "human" rights, as defined in the Human Rights Act and the ECHR are ultimately flawed because they often sit in opposition with one another. On the one hand a burglar can have the "right to a family life" (Article 8) but it is in opposition to Article 5 relating to prison for committing crimes.

Worse still though, Article 8(1) which this burglar has used is even held in opposition to Article 8(2)

1: Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

2: There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

So sending him to prison for the "prevention of disorder or crime.... for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others" is allowed... or is not in this case.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the ECHR, written against the backdrop of 20th Century horrors is now becoming a rather silly document. The problem though is that its politically difficult to withdraw from it (and replace it with something else) however sound the course of action might seem. This is mainly because if you withdraw from "human rights" you're instantly a pariah and clearly in favour of torture.

We're not going to Hell in a handcart, we got there years ago and it's become so normal no one seems to notice anymore. What I don't understand is why so many of the other signatories to the ECHR don't have the problems we do.

EXCLUSIVE: Why Mr Speaker took the risk about the name being said

Why did this happen? Football revenge, plain and simple. Can't you see? It was a set-up!

Dr Who's Fleshy Dopplegangers are REAL!!!!

Comparison shot via here.