Thursday, July 14, 2016 

Here we go gathering nuts in July.

Whenever journalists wet their pants over a speech, you can guarantee it will fall apart within hours.  They did it time and again over Tony Blair's conference speeches, ditto for David Cameron's, and especially George Osborne's budgets. 

Lord, did they repeat the Pavlovian routine last night.  Never mind that Theresa May's address outside Downing Street was almost word for word the same as the one she gave on Monday morning, only for it be immediately overshadowed by Andrea Leadsom's withdrawal from the race; here it was again, regurgitated and reheated, and still it was lapped up.  Never mind that every Tory leader starts out by promising to govern for the toiling masses, for the troubled and the woe begotten, to bring hope where there was previously despair; this time it will obviously be different.  How can Labour possibly hope to compete faced with a newly centrist government, led by a ruthless and yet still compassionate leader, now focused on improving the life chances of the squeezed middle and below?

Err, by meaning what they say rather than spinning a line, by chance?  Theresa's warm words have not exactly been reflected by her appointments to the cabinet; of all those promoted or brought in from outside only Damian Green can you call a true Tory liberal, and he's be given one of the shittiest sticks of all as work and pensions secretary.  Whether he continues with Iain Duncan Smith's cherished universal credit scheme, a clusterfuck of a programme if there ever was one, not to forget the other benefit cuts still meant to be coming into force will be one of the first signs of whether she intends to pay so much as lip service to what she said last night.

Before we continue, can we have a millisecond of silence for the Cameron set?  That's enough.  Again, the response to the sacking of Osborne, Gove, Crabb, Letwin et al has been to marvel at May's brutality and lack of sentiment.  A moment of thought would suggest now is the best time to get rid of the failures, as that's what they are by the goals they set themselves.  The Goves might not currently be speaking to the Camerons, but you can guarantee that now what's done is done it won't be long before the the hatchets are buried.  Moreover, Gove and Cameron had both signalled a shift towards the beginnings of criminal justice reform, something May has never shown the slightest interest in.  Keeping the Sun and Mail on side by junking it before such notions had even got off the ground makes perfect short-term sense for May, if none whatsoever in the longer-term when prisons are on the edge of anarchy.

Similarly, when better to get rid of the completely useless than now?  The bewilderingly over-promoted Nicky Morgan was a sacking waiting a reshuffle, while any worth John Whittingdale offered has long since evaporated, especially when at the outset at least it's an idea to get on the BBC's good side.  This obviously doesn't explain why Jeremy Hunt has stayed in position at health, one explanation being he's so poisoned the well that whomever drinks from it will be similarly afflicted.  Nor is it immediately understandable why Priti Patel has been given international development when only a couple of years ago she suggested abolishing the department, unless that's the idea, or why Andrea Leadsom, aka both the worst minister and leadership candidate ever has been given the environment brief.

As the idea that you punish someone by giving them a job they claimed they could do better when they clearly can't just doesn't work.  Brexit can't mean Brexit if Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox make a complete balls up of it.  Davis is a likeable character in many ways, principled and a sceptic of the securocrats when such a thing remains highly unpopular, but the best man to get the best deal from the EU when his claims are a slightly more sophisticated BUT THEY WANT TO SELL US CARS?  Where is the sense in creating a whole new department for the disgraced Liam Fox when he shouldn't be trusted in charge of a dachshund, let alone international trade?  Johnson as foreign secretary can only be May deciding to keep her friends closer and her enemies even closer, as Johnson is the obvious successor should she fall under a bus: better to have him next to her than scheming from the backbenches.  She also seems to be presuming that giving him a serious job will stop his clowning around, a forlorn hope if there ever was one.  Thinking the three Leavers will cop the blame if there is either no deal or a terrible one is a fantasy: the PM owns the responsibility.  As party management, it might work.  For the rest of us, it should fully underline how fucked we are.

We are then supposed to imagine a more egalitarian line is to emanate from a cabinet dominated by those on the hard right.  We are meant to expect a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few, when money will inevitably become tighter even than it was before.  We are told to put out of our minds 6 years of failure, the promises of strong, stable government, and instead rejoice in the opportunities coming our way courtesy of trade deals bigger than any we could possibly have contemplated, let alone made before.

Who wants to be the first to shout Mayday non-ironically?

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7/14/2016 09:22:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, July 11, 2016 

Eagle and May: the absurdity intensifies.

Poor Angela Eagle.  Jeremy Corbyn was the least likely leader of Labour, didn't for a moment expect he was going to win, but at least he's always believed in what he was doing.  Watching the tragic Eagle dumped in front of the media, trying desperately to persuade herself she agrees with what she's saying, let alone the few journos who hadn't decamped to see Andrea Leadsom flounce off is another of those "like watching a lion rape a sheep, but in a bad way" moments.  Eagle at the best of times looks as though she's on the verge of bursting into tears; so do I, come to think of it, but then I'm not challenging to become the leader of the opposition.

If it weren't for the unreality of the last 18 days, this would surely have been the most patently lysergic interlude of the year thus far.  Eagle looks for all the world as though she's about to launch into selling us a timeshare not in a holiday property, but in Avon products.  Buy shares in Real Leadership by Angela.  Except that doesn't say Angela, surely?  It looks more like Arscle.  Why does the capital A join with what is meant to be an n?  Why is it pink?  Why?  Just why?  They had two weeks to come up with something, and this is it?

We ought to give Eagle the benefit of the doubt.  She clearly doesn't believe for a moment in what she's doing, but she is doing it for what she thinks are the best of reasons.  The real opprobrium needs to be heaped on whoever it is pulling the strings and doing such a lousy job of it.  Are they really all such fucking cowards that none of them are prepared to stand up themselves?  The reasoning presumably is that Eagle is one of the few figures in the party vaguely on the left who might be able to bring some Corbyn-backers away, more so than say a Yvette Cooper, despite Cooper being a far more obvious leader than Eagle.  Or is the plan still to try and deny Corbyn from even being on the ballot, with Eagle the unlikely assassin who then gives way to the real candidates?

No one knows, not even it would seem the plotters.  You would assume they have applied the Kinnock test, not least as the parliamentary Labour party was apparently en masse moved to tears by the beauty of his peroration last week.  Ed Miliband (some might recall that Neil Kinnock's reaction on Miliband's election as leader was to declare "we've got our party back") failed to pass the supermarket test according to Neil, as voters told him they wanted to vote Labour, but couldn't for Ed personally.  Corbyn fares even more poorly, with a fitter on the docks in Cardiff calling him "weird".  How on earth do they imagine Eagle is going to fare?  She doesn't even look confident in herself for crying out loud.  What happens if Corbyn is still on the ballot?  Assume that Corbyn is still on it and against all the odds Eagle wins.  Unless Labour hasn't noticed, the near entirety of the right-wing press has very quickly declared Theresa May to be the reincarnation of Thatcher, Churchill and Boudica combined, the kind of warrior for truth, justice and the British way we've all been yearning for during these barren years of Cameronite hegemony.  Any affection they might have for Eagle dispensing with Jezza will disappear in an instant, and we'll be back to the headlines, only altered slightly, that every Labour leader gets (COMMUNIST EAGLE WANTS TO NATIONALISE PREMIER LEAGUE/NON-BALD EAGLE FAILS TO TAKE FLIGHT/EAGLE DEMANDS RIGHTS FOR VEGETABLES etc).

For May it is.  All memories of the last two instances when parties appointed leaders unopposed have it seems been banished, as in neither case were Michael Howard or Gordon Brown the greatest of successes.  Others might also recall the Tories demanded an election when Brown was in effect given a coronation, and then had much fun with their "Bottler Brown" jibe.  May we're told is not considering an election, despite how she has stated repeatedly that "Brexit is Brexit".  Hadn't it ought to be put to the voters if that is still their feeling considering the turmoil of the past 18 days, the changing of leaders, the resignations, the plotting, the everything?  Shouldn't voters be asked to give their approval to what the exit plan turns out to be at the very least, especially when May said today that bringing freedom of movement to an end was more important than staying in the single market?  While some might well have taken the question on the ballot to be "Do you think the UK should be economically crippled because you're a racist cunt? Yes/No", I'm fairly certain it wasn't.

Impossible as it is to feel even slightly for Leadsom, as she knew full what she was doing with the comments on Theresa May's lack of children, you can't also help but wonder how the May media consensus developed so quickly.  The Times described Leadsom as lacking "judgment, knowledge and decency".  Really?  Compared to whom, and what?  The Theresa May who informed the world a man escaped deportation because he had a cat?  The Theresa May who the Telegraph, yes, the Telegraph lambasted for her absurdly right-wing conference speech last year on immigration and asylum?  The Theresa May who had ultimate responsibility for the chronic problems at the Yarl's Wood detention centre?  If the media are having second thoughts about leaving the EU, then unless they know something we don't there doesn't seem to be any room for manoeuvre.  Can it really be be purely down to May being the best of a very bad lot when they've had no problem plumping for monomaniacs and fanatics in the past?

If she meant at least some of what she said in her speech this morning, a massive if considering it was as much as meant to be a pitch to Tory members as it was the country, you could conclude May might be something of an improvement on Cameron.  Only all those suggestions of reforms are undermined by her insistence on leaving the EU, and doing so potentially in the stupidest, most damaging way possible.  Again, this might have been a sop to those who voted Leave.  If not however, it only underlines how disenfranchised those of us who don't think a Leave vote based on a campaign of lies and xenophobia, lead by politicians who have since defenestrated themselves should be taken as final.  With Corbyn also making clear that Labour under him would campaign for leaving the EU, albeit with the best possible deal for the country, it leaves us where?  With the Lib Dems, who contributed heavily to us being in this mess?  Hoping some Labour figure emerges who isn't a stooge, that can unite the party and bring the country along with them?

On second thoughts, I think I'll just say fuck it and move to a country with sensible politics.  I hear Swaziland's nice this time of year.

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7/11/2016 09:46:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, June 07, 2016 

This is how you don't silence journalists in a democratic country.

There are many wonderful things about this Stephen Daisley piece that has been doing the rounds, but for reasons of time and brevity let's just zero in on his thundering conclusion:

But media hatred is not criticism. It is a rage against a world that refuses to work out the way it ought to and replicates a hostility to critical enquiry familiar from earlier forms of populism. The object is not "fairness" or "balance" but complicity by intimidation. The object is to single out journalists like Kuenssberg and, by making an example of them, produce a chilling effect.

 Am I sure I want to write this story? Is publishing this sceptical analysis going to fill my timeline with abuse and invective? Look what happened to Laura Kuenssberg. Is it really worth it?

 That is how you silence journalists in a democratic country. Not a finger lifted, not a bone broken. Make their job more and more difficult. Make employing them more and more bothersome. Eventually, you'll shut them up or prompt their employer to rein them in. And you won't have to worry about hearing them in the mainstream media anymore.

Once upon a time, journalists used to expect green ink letters, dog shit in an envelope, or exceptionally rarely to never having actually happened, letter bombs.  Actually, that's not true.  Some journalists in democratic countries can potentially face far worse, as we sadly know.  But no, what they really have to fear is an unpleasant timeline.

Abusing journalists as opposed to criticising (some) commentators is rarely worth the effort, not to mention not condonable.  Your average punter might not like the media that much themselves, but if you so inspire your supporters to descend en masse outside a BBC building to protest about perceived biased coverage say, then you start looking ever so slightly unreasonable.

Still, the ironies here are nearly impossible to count.  In his scattergun spray against everything he disdains, Daisley mentions identity politics.  It doesn't seem to matter that Daisley zeroes in immediately on why Kuenssberg has faced abuse and complaints so quickly - it's because she's a woman, obvs.  Actual evidence for the dislike of Kuenssberg, which I am not defending in any way, being based on her gender is extremely thin on the ground, but no matter.  Just throw it in there.  That the media deciding Kuenssberg being hissed was more of a story than Jeremy Corbyn's actual speech doesn't really suggest there's much in the way of silencing going on either.

What's happening more widely is the mixing up of journalists and MPs as though they were one and the same, with strangely the same people, suddenly aware of what some normies and a lot of motivated, hateful shits think of them, wanting something to be done about it.  The Reclaim the Internet campaign, laudable as it is, would make more sense if the internet had ever been a place where wide open spaces invited debate rather than flame wars and abuse.  It hasn't, and probably never will.  Facebook and Twitter are too open and too big to moderate.  This is not a bug; it's a feature.  The internet has always been about subcultures, where groups of like-minded people congregate and either get on or fall out, but did so in a confined space.  Throw a whole load of people of different, competing world-views and backgrounds together on one huge place, remove the barriers to communication, and what do you expect is going to happen?

The fact that journalism is becoming one of the worst possible professions to work in, as hardly anyone wants to pay for the product, allied with how it's so easy for the cunts of this world to scream at you thanks to how the media embraced Twitter only for it to come back and bite them in the arse is merely coincidence.  Actual populism, the kind that sees hateful bastards warn that staying in the EU will raise the chance of women being raped because of all the people with different "attitudes" coming over here, is a threat.  

The "populism" Daisley and friends object to is people daring to speak up against the overly deferential treatment of not the mainstream, but the real, actual establishment, or rather establishments, as there's the political establishment and media establishments, as obviously the Graun/Indie/FT aren't the same as the Mail/Sun/Express/Times/Telegraph.  The coverage say that for so long treated Farage, a populist if he wasn't such a pompous prig, with kid gloves.  Farage has had a far better press than Corbyn, and I'll leave it up to you which one is the more radical.

Such though are the biases we've long got used to, for better, for worse.  What really grinds the gears is when the bosses of the Daisleys of this world piss on my head and then he and others like him insist I'm the one doing the pissing.

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6/07/2016 11:17:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, June 06, 2016 

Does anyone understand politics anymore?

Andrew Sparrow is good enough in his latest politics live blog to admit he sometimes feels like he doesn't understand politics anymore.  How could anyone claim to understand politics when polling suggests that Boris Johnson is now the most trusted figure in the EU referendum debate?  Admittedly, by most trusted we essentially mean least not trusted, as he has a net figure of minus 26, yet that's still 25 points above David Cameron.  And amazingly, Boris Johnson's figure has improved over the past two months.

These figures are practically meaningless, of course.  They're not really rating trust, they're rating popularity.  Nicola Sturgeon is second most trusted, and she's said almost nothing of any consequence on the referendum, except to make clear how she would obviously be doing a much better job of losing than Cameron currently is.  As discussed before, the referendum has practically turned into a matter of all or nothing for Dave: he wins, he can stay in power for at least a little longer.  He loses, he resigns.  If there's any in-between, there's been no evidence of it.  He can talk all he likes about staying on regardless of the result; he can hardly say any different.  Everyone knows he's a goner if it's Leave, not least as it should be up to the Leavers to make a go of the negotiations with the EU.  They wanted out, they campaigned for it, they should be the ones tasked with making their claims of things only getting better freed from the confines of the EU a reality.

Johnson's triumph, despite as Sparrow outlines issuing a constant stream of half-truths to outright whoppers seems indicative of where we are currently.  All politicians are liars; all involved are scaremongering; only those impervious to practically all attacks can hope to rise above it.  That Johnson has been twice sacked for dishonesty only seems to demonstrate how superior he is at lying, being found out, and recovering regardless.  Most lesser mortals would have been done for the first time, not managed to be in with a massive shout of becoming prime minister while claiming that bananas can't be sold in bunches of more than 3.

It almost makes you wonder if the key is to lie big and as often as possible, just combine it with what looks to be a positive case.  Boris and chums spent today claiming not just there would be a "triple whammy" should we remain, with all three parts of the whammy swiftly debunked, but also that you can only guarantee long-term prosperity with democracy and freedom.  This is an incredibly dubious argument, undermined not least by how China to name but one country has combined lack of basic freedoms with a growth rate the envy of the rest of the world.  History suggests that a growing middle class will eventually demand greater freedoms to the detriment of authoritarian governments/rulers, only this has yet to come to fruition.  Nonetheless, much as the claims of lack of accountability, with bureaucrats making decisions in Brussels we can't influence are incredibly overblown, they still resonate.  You can't be against democracy.  You can't be against freedom.  You don't want to be under the control of a remote elite more interested in continuing to concentrating power than anything else.  Why not take back control?

That it's snake oil doesn't matter when snake oil seems preferable, at least for the moment, to a constant diet of doom.  Both Vote Leave (PDF) and Stronger In (ditto) issued dossiers today; even the merest glance at the two makes clear that Stronger In's, while still listing the most hyperbolic predictions of what could happen if we leave, is easily the more based in reality.  Facts though seem irrelevant, even as voters demand them; the facts we really want depend on our biases.   Very few of us are completely ignorant of the arguments; that is not to say though the arguments we're aware of are not themselves ignorant.  One might hope the intervention of the Institute for Fiscal Studies today, making clear Michael Gove was misrepresenting its finding that leaving would save £8 billion a year, albeit an £8 billion that would very quickly melt away if the economy declined as they believe might have some impact, but probably not.

Nor is there much hope when as Leave put it, Cameron appeared alongside a host of losers.  Natalie Bennett has been hopeless as leader of the Greens; Harriet Harman was such a success as interim Labour leader she massively helped Corbyn to victory; and Tim Farron hasn't even started to begin the rebuilding process the Lib Dems need to go through.  Who currently undecided could possibly be persuaded by any of these figures?  Has Remain gone too early with its economic campaign?  Has the scaremongering had the opposite effect?  Are the polls suggesting a shift to Leave wrong or merely the equivalent of what happened in Scotland, where Yes received a boost late on only to fall far short?

My own feeling, so wrong last year, is that Leave really could win this, helped by how Leave voters are more motivated to turn out than Remain supporters.  I hope I'm wrong, and I'd be lying to say I haven't shifted before; my initial feeling was the coalition the Tories formed to win the election were likely to be natural Leavers, only to be placated by the polls.  Anyone claiming to be certain at this point is either a liar or a fool.  I just fear Leave has the edge, with all the potential implications that has.

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6/06/2016 09:14:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, June 02, 2016 

Not everything is about you.

In the latest development in the everything is Labour's fault meme, the last couple of days has seen first the Times and then the Graun ascribe the apparent dip in the fortunes of Remain to the party "failing to pull its weight".  If only Corbyn and friends were out there campaigning night and day, putting their message across to all the Labour voters across the country rather than leaving it to Dave and his shitty mates, then clearly all would be well.

As with most of the criticisms of Corbyn's Labour, there is a smidgen of truth to this.  Yes, Labour could be doing a bit more.  Yes, it could be making its case more forcefully.  By doing so though, does it risk getting associated with a campaign that is essentially internecine warfare between the Cameron leaning Tories and the UKIP leaning Tories, and doing more harm to itself than good in the process? Also yes.

And then we have the media's own agenda when it comes to the EU vote.  No bones about it, the actual debate stripped of the histrionics and personalities is as dull as ditchwater.  While Alan Johnson's campaign is more in line with Remain in general, the one being ran by the leadership itself is attempting to play it reasonably straight.  Which is boring.

It didn't make much difference then that today's speech by Corbyn was easily his most significant intervention yet.  He made clear that while Labour is foursquare in favour of the EU, the party is only supporting Remain with the intention of reforming the organisation from within.  He will veto the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership if Labour is in power come 2020, and made clear that he fears if Leave wins, whichever Tory ends up leader will gut the workers' rights we owe to the EU.  He and the rest of the shadow cabinet won't share a platform with the Tories on the basis of the rest of their policies, and he criticised the idea that Leaving would result automatically in a recession.

In other words, he walked the same line he has throughout.  Everyone knows he isn't the biggest fan of the EU and he's not pretending to be.  His position is pragmatic: leaving is the wrong choice, but it wouldn't be the biggest disaster in the history of the world.  The Tories are a far greater problem, which they are.  He isn't going to make the same mistake Scottish Labour did and hitch his party to a campaign that will damage it far more than it will its main constituent.

What then has the media decided is the biggest story from the speech?  That "Corbyn supporters", not Labour supporters notice, hissed Laura Kuenssberg when she asked an question.  The BBC is about the only organisation giving the speech itself a higher billing.  The most ocular proof yet of Labour's misogyny, on top of its obvious antisemitism?  Err, not really, as ITV's Chris Ship was booed as well when he questioned whether Corbyn had been half-hearted in his support for Remain up to now.  As Corbyn responded, this also depends on the media's decision of what to cover.

And obviously, the reaction of those present to a journalist is far more newsworthy than the contents of yet another lecture from Uncle Tom Corbo.  Do I really have to say it's daft to boo or hiss a journalist, as it is, especially one from the BBC?  That it is doesn't make that the story, unless hacks have no intention whatsoever of playing by their own rules, which they don't.   You don't have to think there is some great get Corbyn campaign to realise portraying him and his supporters as not playing by the accepted rules is much to their advantage with their other anti-Corbyn sources.  That one "senior Labour figure" was briefing after the speech that Corbyn "had just sabotaged the Remain campaign", about the most obtuse possible reading you could make of it just sums up how spiteful such people are determined to be.

One of the reasons there has been a change of attitude towards journalists, deserved or not, is they so often seem determined to make everything about them.  Criticism of Labour from a media overwhelmingly biased against the party, let alone under the leadership of Corbyn is expected.  What's going beyond that is to criticise, and then try to shift the story when Corbyn does precisely what was asked of him.  Everything is not always about a self-obsessed media, just as it isn't always about a self-absorbed political class.  A few egos being punctured every now and again wouldn't hurt, only it's usually just the one side that gets it in the neck.

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6/02/2016 07:57:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 31, 2016 

The absurdity of it all.

I take it all back. The EU referendum is brilliant.  How could it not be when it results in such delicious absurdities as have taken place over the past couple of days?  First, mere weeks after accusing him of palling around with extremists, David Cameron appears on the same platform as to Sadiq Khan to big him up as though he was the winning Tory candidate.  A proud Muslim!  A smasher of glass ceilings!  A thoroughly delightful chap!  Oh, and he thinks it'd be swell if you would now vote to stay in the EU.

Khan can of course do as he likes.  He now has a mandate of his own, to the extent where he can pretty much shut Labour out if he so wishes.  If he wants to share a platform so soon after the election with one of those chiefly responsible for a campaign he said was putting off other Muslims from going into politics, that's up to him.  Clearly he thinks the ends justify the means.  Which again, is fine.

Some of us though are far more petty.  Far as I'm concerned, all things considered, Cameron got himself into this mess, and Cameron can get himself out of it.  Sure, this means if he manages to pull it off he gets the glory, but equally if he fails then he gets the Gene Wilder/Willy Wonka treatment.  Add in how Cameron implied Khan was an extremist not to be trusted as far as he can be thrown, and my response were I in his position would be to tell Dave to GTFO.

This is also the view of John McDonnell, who equally rightly thinks sharing a platform with the Tories full stop is a bad idea.  Which it is.  If Labour must campaign to stay in the EU, leaving it to Alan Johnson in the main while McDonnell and others pootle around not getting much in the way of attention is definitely the way to go.  Anyone saying Labour has to do this or that first has to explain whether their proposed plan of action will bring any benefit to the party whatsoever, because as we saw with Scotland, the public seem more than prepared to decide for themselves as to whether or not a particular party acted in their best interests.

The horror with which the results of focus groups saying they didn't know whether Labour was in favour of leave or remain, backed up with a further poll, just demonstrates that politicians don't always think the worst of the public; often the public amply do that themselves.  What it does show is that first, the vast majority aren't the slightest bit interested in the internal machinations of political parties.  Duh.  Second, not knowing whether Labour is for leave or remain is a good thing, as at the moment the party should be graceful for small mercies.  Third, that again, the vast majority also aren't the least bit interested in the referendum, otherwise they would know that Labour is overwhelmingly in favour of remain.  Fourth, they also don't know what the Tory position is.  Because, just to rub this in, they don't freaking care.

Labour politicians attacking each other for sharing platforms with the Tories isn't the most absurd thing of the last couple of days though, oh no.  Two examples merely from today beat it.  Chris Grayling, the berk's berk, the journeyman's journeyman, the bone in the spicy wing, the tits on the bull, said this morning that voters shouldn't be making their minds up based on the EU of today, but on the EU of the future.  Again, either this is a politician having a surprisingly high opinion of the average voter, most of whom haven't the slightest clue about practically anything the EU does beyond exist and that it's bad, or it's a politician with not even the beginnings of knowing how to make a case.  Can you imagine if parties tried applying this to any other election?  Voter!  Don't make up your mind up on how the government is performing today!  Just think how it will be in 10 years' time, even though we're not providing you with even the most basic facts of how it is currently!  Manifesto?  You want a manifesto?  You're joking!

And then there was Boris, Gove and err, Gisela Stuart, making clear we have entered the handjob, or moon on a stick phase of the campaign.  Despite telling us for eons that the £350m going to the EU each week could instead be sent straight to the NHS, now here come the most unlikely threesome since REMOVED ON LEGAL ADVICE to claim that if we left the EU we could dispense with VAT on fuel as it disproportionately hits the poorest households.  Put another way, Boris, Gove and Stuart are offering happy endings if you vote leave, as it's about as likely they would put any savings genuinely left at the end of the process on lifting the burden on the poors as they would on a state body of sex workers.  It's completely transparent, and yet what else is Leave to do?  Admit that once we've left any money coming back will instead be spent on reintroducing the subsidies and funds the EU currently distributes in the UK?  Absurd doesn't really begin to cover it.

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5/31/2016 09:50:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 24, 2016 

Killin.


In the end, everything comes back to the Simpsons.  In Rosebud, after being wished a Happy Birthday by the Ramones, Mr Burns orders Smithers to have the Rolling Stones killed.  "But sir, that wasn-" "Do as I say!"

In the same way, it would be far too easy to have those personally responsible for da yoot #Votin campaign for the Remainers slaughtered unceremoniously in their beds.  Equally, those at the Stronger In headquarters who commissioned it, then gave the OK after seeing what venturethree came up with should also not be shot down on their way to work as recompense.  No, to really make clear just how traumatised everyone who has watched just the 25-second clip urging the youn t ge ou an vot will be, as you can't just drop the g from words ending in ing and claim that is how the childrens speak, innocent people have to die.

Hang on a minute you're probably saying, that seems a bit much.  Except it's not.  Is it really that hard to put together a campaign that might just have an impact with younger voters while not both being as dumb as a bag of rocks and therefore also treating them as having the IQ and attention span of an exceptionally dim goldfish?

Here's one idea I just pulled out of my ass, and I've been awake already today for 17 hours.  Black background.  White text.  If you're watching this, you're probably already aware of the issues around the EU referendum.  We just want to remind you of who's in favour of leaving, and who's in favour of remaining.  Black and white shots of Farage, Gove, IDS, Chris Grayling, Dr Death, Katie Hopkins, etc etc.  Colour shots of Nicola Sturgeon, Jeremy Corbyn, Caroline Lucas, Alan Johnson, Eddie Izzard, JK Rowling, any number of the other various celebs/artists who signed the luvvie letter.  That's what we think too.  Vote Remain.  End.

Now, which of you Remain dipshits pays me, and which one of you is going to cut down the requisite amount of first born?

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5/24/2016 09:41:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, May 19, 2016 

The artist subsequently known as PJS.

It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the continued failure of the tabloids, News UK in particular, to get the injunction preventing them from making public the identity of the person known only as PJS lifted.  They must have thought it was a sure thing; how could the supreme court possibly disagree that the identity of PJS had become so well known, thanks to the name being all across social media, published in the National Enquirer, the Sunday Mail, numerous blogs etc, that it would be an absurdity not to let the Sun on Sunday print all the juicy details on the threesome?

Never underestimate the potential for judges to go against accepted wisdom (judgement PDF), especially when they notice something that's passed everyone else by.  IPSO's code of practice, Lord Mance notes, states that an "exceptional public interest would need to be demonstrated to over-ride the normally paramount interests of children under 16".  You could of course argue that consenting adults should consider the potential consequences for their children of extra-marital activities, regardless of the agreement of both partners, not least because of the obvious potential for it to cause difficulties down the line.  This is not by any means though a justification for a story that all the justices agree has no public interest defence whatsoever to be published.

Indeed, I would argue that it's possible in this case to respect the arguments of both Lord Mance for the majority in over-turning the Court of Appeal ruling that the injunction should be set aside, and Lord Toulson in his lone dissension.  It's hard not to respect a judge who risks incurring the wrath of Paul Dacre by directly referencing the paper claiming the law to be an ass due to the publication of PJS's identity elsewhere; if that is the price of applying the law, Mance writes, it is one which must be paid.  The court is well aware of the lesson which King Canute gave his courtiers, Mance goes on, in answer to the claims that injunctions in the age of the internet are defunct, with the Lord later quoting a previous ruling by Justice Eady "that wall-to-wall excoriation in national newspapers, whether tabloid or ‘broadsheet’, is likely to be significantly more intrusive and distressing for those concerned than the availability of information on the Internet or in foreign journals to those, however many, who take the trouble to look it up".  I would argue that distinction still holds up today, if barely: there is a huge difference between a story appearing on multiple newspaper front pages, available for anyone to see at petrol stations, supermarkets, newsagents etc, whereas online it is still possible to avoid such stories altogether if you so wish.

Lord Toulson disagrees, writing that the "court must live in the world as it is and not as it would like it to be", and also that "in this case I have reached a clear view that the story’s confidentiality has become so porous that the idea of it still remaining secret in a meaningful sense is illusory".  Toulson does not "underestimate the acute unpleasantness for PJS of the story being splashed, but I doubt very much in the long run whether it will be more enduring than the unpleasantness of what has been happening and will inevitably continue to
happen.  The story is not going away".

It most certainly isn't.  The only reason that the papers have been full of stories for the last couple of weeks about a certain Downton Abbey actor are due to a certain injunction still being in place from years ago.  One way or the other, the British media will get a story they want to be out in the open out in the open.  They might not make any money out of it, quite the contrary in the case of the Sun, with its legal fees likely to be astronomical, but for those who want to know they'll probably be able to find out.  If the case going to trial, with PJS and YMA likely to win, gives them satisfaction and protects their children, then great.  More likely however is that Carter-Fuck will go on getting richer while the kiddiwinks will find out one of their parents is partial to threesomes regardless.

All the same, coming in the same week as the IPSO decision that the Sun blatantly breached the editors' code of practice over the QUEEN BACK BREXIT bullshit, with the paper throwing its toys out of the pram in response, saying yes, the headline was a complete lie, but the one underneath "qualified" it, and the Queen isn't above politics anyway because she called the Chinese rude, for those of us whom enjoy schadenfreude, it's been a fine time.  Long may it continue.

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5/19/2016 09:27:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 03, 2016 

Milton Keynes doesn't just lack a soul. It also has no heart.

(This is a guest post by a life-long Milton Keynes resident who wants to remain anonymous.)

Something strange is going on.  The London media, as everyone knows, is obsessed with London.  To them, London is England, Britain; north of Watford may as well be marked on the map with "here be monsters".  The actual north is another country; Scotland is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.  And to be fair, you can understand their obsession: London is a whole series of cities contained within the M25 car park, a constantly undulating mass you can travel around quickly and easily on some of the best public transport in the world.  Almost everything you could possibly want is within reach and almost anything you could want to buy can be purchased swiftly.  Sure, you now practically have to be a millionaire to own your home, everyone must get tired at some point of living in a concrete jungle, and if you're down on your luck it must be one of the hardest places in the country to eke out an existence, but for the most part the positives outweigh the negatives.

Why then are journalists suddenly paying attention to Milton Keynes?  Recently there was a Newsnight segment dedicated to the "city" (MK is not technically designated a city, and doesn't deserve to be one) being a hidden gem, while in today's Guardian Patrick Barkham eulogises at length on the city's development, the supposed threats to this wonderland of grid roads, open spaces and apparent boundless potential.  Apart from house prices for the time at least remaining well below what they are in London, the answer is even more cynical than that.  For Milton Keynes is London, just with everything good about the capital and therefore viewed as a downside to your average London journo hacked away.

To start with, Patrick Barkham doesn't even tell the story of MK right.  Milton Keynes did not suddenly spring out of nowhere into existence via the development corporation; the "city" itself takes its name from a village that's still there, not that a hack would ever find it as it's a fair distance away from the gleaming centre.  Milton Keynes was in fact built around a number of villages and small towns that have a long history in their own right, the most notable being Wolverton, Stony Stratford, Bletchley and Newport Pagnell.  As Barkham writes, the development corporation did have some damn good ideas: the grid system does for the most part result in a town that rarely gets snarled up outside of rush hour, travel by car once you're used to the place is quick and simple, and it would be pointless to deny that the town, viewed from the car window, looks clean, pretty and welcoming, such is the way the various housing estates were all kept separate from each other.

Which is also the town's greatest downfall.  No, of course Milton Keynes doesn't have a soul, but a far better way to describe it is as atomised.  The separation of the various housing developments ensures that there is no wider sense of community in the town.  The fact that you don't need to travel through different estates to get to where you want unless you have to results in a city that is little more than a collection of villages.  People come in, they go to work, go to one of the larger supermarkets disconnected from the estates to shop, perhaps go up to what locals call the "city", meaning Central Milton Keynes on the weekend, and that's it.  Few of these estates have pubs, although some have restaurants and most takeaways; if you want a drink or to experience what little local colour is on offer, you'll have to go to one of the places mentioned above.

By the same token, these estates vary hugely in terms of socio-economic background.  Barkham mentions Shenley Church End, which is one of the better off areas of the town; Netherfield, also mentioned, is by contrast one of the most deprived.  By virtue of the planning of the town, these areas are effectively closed off to outside eyes, so you'll never see how rundown certain areas have become, nor will you see for instance the gated communities that have also sprung up, like the couple opposite the National Badminton Centre in Loughton.  This is perfect for those who have the attitude of out of sight, out of mind, which has long prevailed in MK.

If you're a walker or a cyclist, then yes, you will be exposed to these places, and as Barkham writes, the grid system was designed with pedestrians and bikes considered, with underpasses and the "redways" easily accessible.  Except hardly anyone uses them, for the reason that MK principally was made for the car.  Even on a beautiful spring Sunday afternoon you can walk along the redways for miles and rarely see another soul.  The lakes that are dotted around, like Willen and Caldecotte are much more popular, it's true, and yet still hardly ever full to bursting except in high summer.  Barkham at least admits that public transport isn't great, which is about right: it's not terrible, but is expensive and irregular away from the main routes served.

This might all be sounding great to your average Londoner so far, as long as they can drive.  Atomised, disparate, soulless, but affordable, right?  Up to a point, yes.  But what about culture?  Milton Keynes is the place culture forgot.  It wasn't until around the turn of the century that we got a theatre.  Fancy Shakespeare, a comedian, the odd serious minded play?  Well, we've got Shrek the Musical for you, or Hairspray.  Arthouse cinema?  Sorry, no.  We might have had the first ten screen multiplex in the country, with the site soon to be demolished, a brand new Odeon, and a World of Cine, but anything other than blockbuster fare?  No chance.  How about any sort of nightlife?  Sure, we're now in the era of Tinder and Netflix and chill, where gentrification is closing down more and more London clubs but at least there's still a few.  Here, in a "city" of over a quarter of a million people?  Again, you'll have to go to the one of the above mentioned towns.  Roughly two pubs in the entire town play host to bands of even the slightest note, but you like Yates's and Wetherspoons' right?  Loads of those up the city at least.  No clubs though, sorry.  We do have the Stables, Cleo Laine's place out at Wavendon, which is great if you like that sort of thing, but that's about all you're getting.  You'll need to go to Northampton to find any sort of bustle.

It does then amaze when people like Linda Inoki (I predictably had never heard of Inoki, Theo Chalmers or their campaign groups until I saw Barkham's piece.  Clearly doing good work) describe Milton Keynes as having "phenomenal character".  MK has no character.  Yes, there's something to be said for the way the city was planned out, for the shopping centre itself, if not for what is actually inside it, but to try and claim that MK has a distinctive character through having none whatsoever is pushing it.

Pete Winkleman, who everyone in MK has heard of and anyone with any sense detests, is the personification of everything wrong with the place.  Uprooting Wimbledon and implanting it in MK was simply the most crass and brazen of the attempts to give the town something to base itself around.  Never previously had there been a main MK football team for the reason, again, that everyone was far more attached to their local estate, town or village side.  They were never going to get anywhere but no one cared.  We were more than happy to support Northampton, or choose a club from elsewhere when it came to the leagues proper.  It would be churlish to deny MK Dons do have a following, as they do, but only from a minority. 

Just as the city itself has a few noisy supporters who are finally getting noticed by the London media.  Yes, Milton Keynes is great if you want a quiet family life.  If you're 18 to 40 though, like culture of even the most vaguely alternative variety, don't especially want to drive and aren't comfortably off, it's little short of hell.  Barkham and the other gawpers are more than welcome to swap places with me.  

Until then, it would be nice if hacks bothered to scratch even slightly at MK's glossy veneer.  Had Barkham so much as walked slightly further down "CMK’s broad boulevards", he would have discovered that in the underpasses now live a number of homeless men and women.  Not even during the peak of homelessness in the 90s was Milton Keynes unable to put a roof over everyone's head.  It has such a problem now.

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5/03/2016 09:20:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, April 18, 2016 

Contrary McContraryface.

God, it must be tiring being a professional contrarian.  The world is in such flux it's hard enough remaining consistent as it is, let alone when your entire raison d'etre is to be against whatever the current trend or movement is.  Should you be cheering on Donald Trump because he's upsetting so many people, or now that it seems he's finally hit the buffers should you be abandoning him also?  Equally, judging by how it's been standard right-wing practice for the last 40 years to be against whatever students are currently up to, shouldn't you in fact be on the side of those few demanding safe spaces, insisting on trigger warnings and counting all the micro-aggressions they suffer on a daily basis?  Or would that in fact be too contrary by half, and lose you vital cred with your other contrarians, huffing and blowing about young people being young and stupid?

Brendan O'Neill's Spectator piece on how terrible the whole Boaty McBoatface thing is an absolute classic of the contrarian genre.  The best contrarians you might have noticed always contradict themselves, and never for a moment recognise they are guilty of the same crimes they are ascribing to others.  In one single paragraph O'Neill manages to be a magnificent hypocrite three times over, and still ploughs on regardless.

The problem with over 100,000 people voting to name a boat Boaty McBoatface then, rather than something more serious like Condoleeza Rice or Thrusting Organ or Sir Ron Micklethwaite or John Whittingdale or Brendan O'Neill isn't public opinion, but a "shallow, sneery culture taking hold in certain sections of the internet".  Heaven forfend that many of those people will have voted to name it that not because they were led by the hand by some minor Twitter celeb, but because they thought it funny.  Brendan, all but needless to say, doesn't find it funny, although his piece is so suffused with irony while not being ironic that it's difficult to be certain whether or not he does find it at least somewhat amusing or like those people he says deserved to be bullied for being able to recite whole episodes of Filthy, Rich and Catflap.  Irony alert!  He doesn't really mean anyone deserves to be bullied!  Or does he?  Who knows?

See, O'Neill and the whole Spiked lot are very keen on democracy and public opinion so long as it reflects their own views on how stupid everyone who isn't in their little clique is.  When then so many people do something so daft, the blame has to be assigned not to them but to those who drove them to it.  Hence this sneery culture gets in the neck, as directed by a media that loves nothing more than "than writing news stories based on some spat Stephen Fry had or a YouTube video".  No doubt it's all part of the onion-like layers of irony contained in O'Neill's piece that Spiked currently really does have a piece on why Stephen Fry was right to call out self-pity.

It's at this point that an editor ought to come in and say to O'Neill that "hey, dingleberry, THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE DOING, AND YOU'RE SNEERING AT THEM TO BOOT."  Only there aren't editors any more, just freelancers sending in their work to the content aggregators that O'Neill is complaining about and contributing to AT THE SAME GODDAMN TIME.  Still, there is one serious argument left, or at least seems to be: is it not true that the Boaty McBoatfacers are of "a new po-mo generation that has absolutely no sense of history or depth or meaning?"

Well, no.  O'Neill's band of anti-po-moers have been going on about how terrible post-modernism is since the early 90s, forever slapping each other on the back, whether it be for tearing apart Jean Baudillard for his the Gulf War Did Not Take Place essays or over the Sokal affair.  If this is a whole new po-mo generation, then his group and all the other anti-po-moers have rather failed, haven't they?

It's a good thing then there isn't a new po-mo generation with no sense of history or depth or meaning, as this is the same generation that is in fact acutely aware of history etc.  We know this because this is the same generation O'Neill etc so detest precisely because of all their trigger warnings, micro-aggressions and so forth, who at the same time are apparently incapable of taking anything seriously, except for racism, transphobia, etc, and who love the "flippant, camp purveyors of 140-character gags and 90-second videos of some comedian ‘ABSOLUTELY DEMOLISHING DONALD TRUMP' served up by Buzzfeed et al.

Yep, O'Neill is right, taking things seriously is a real downer these days.  Or at least it is if you take O'Neill and his pals seriously.  Which I seem to have done.  Oops.

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4/18/2016 08:29:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 14, 2016 

Still got the Whittingdale blues.

Just in case the whole Whittingdale thing wasn't silly enough, here comes Nichi Hodgson in the Graun denouncing the culture secretary for in her view throwing Olivia King to the wolves:
But being scared for your own reputation shouldn’t be reason enough for you to sully somebody else’s. By stating over and over again that he had not known his former lover was a sex worker, and that he had ended the relationship immediately upon finding out, Whittingdale has thrown her to the red-top wolves, making sure to thoroughly shame her in the process. Unfortunately, Whittingdale seems blind to the fact that it’s not only his former partner he’s distanced himself from, it’s his own spine as well.
 Except Whittingdale hasn't stated anything over and over again. The only comment he has made was the statement released on Tuesday night.  When doorstepped yesterday morning he referred the reporters to the statement and said he wouldn't be saying anything further.  Hodgson does at least accept that if Whittingdale, as he says, was unaware of his partner's work then he
might have felt a justifiable sense of betrayal. But the fact that Whittingdale was so quick to drop her when the tabloid press revealed her identity to him, and is now so keen to stress that immediacy in his defence, doesn’t come across as the reaction of a hurt yet honourable man.
I'm probably one of the least qualified people to pass judgement on relationships, but keeping something like the fact you're a sex worker from a prospective long-term partner (if again that's what Whittingdale was looking for; we're all making huge assumptions here) must surely be considered a deal breaker, especially if active deceit was involved.  We can all comment on prudishness, shaming and hypocrisy, only to come to very different conclusions when it involves us personally.  It's similar to pornography; we might have no problem with consuming it, regard it as the canary in the free speech mine, but plenty would at the same time not want friends or relatives to be playing a starring role in it.  Such are our hang-ups.

In any case, the genuinely guilty of prudery here are barely so much as mentioned by Hodgson.  Yes, Whittingdale could well of said yes, I dated a sex worker, who wants to fucking touch me, only he's no doubt embarrassed by the whole affair also.  No one has disputed his statement as yet, more than suggesting that he was in the dark and ended the relationship because he felt he had been lied to.

Should we be making judgements on this as a whole in any case?  Just as with the other privacy story of the week, it's disingenuous to claim it isn't about that but in fact this for the reason there would be no story whatsoever had the tabloids not decided politician dates dominatrix was worth investigating, even if they didn't end up publishing it.  The irony here is the people who have truly shamed King are those who otherwise claim to be against press intrusion, or normally critical when sex scandals are played out by those whose natural habitat is the gutter.  There is a case for asking why it wasn't published, but it's been hijacked by those whose cause as Ian Dunt has said has degenerated far from where it started off.

All in all, a thoroughly depressing week.

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4/14/2016 05:48:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 13, 2016 

The Whittingdale blues.

Absolutely nothing about the John Whittingdale/dominatrix story seems to make sense.

Let's then take it one step at a time.  If we're to believe Whittingdale's statement from last night, he had no idea that Olivia King was an escort, let alone the proud keeper of a dungeon.  When he did become aware of that fact, he ended the relationship.  No one seems to be as yet disputing it or claiming Whittingdale to be telling lies, so presumably the culture secretary's claim that he met his girlfriend of a few months on Match.com is accurate.

Now, unless I was reading something into the original Byline piece that simply wasn't there, as my take from it was that Whittingdale knew she was an escort and presumably was paying for her to accompany him to events, this is even less of a story than it first appeared.  Even if Nick Mutch is not explicit in saying that was the case, he definitely does claim that "Whittingdale's relationships with prostitutes are said to be well known in the London underworld".  He also quotes an unnamed senior Labour MP as having seen Whittingdale in the Houses of Parliament with a prostitute, although he wasn't sure if she was King or not.

Next, we have the James Cusick piece from Sunday.  This has since been described by another writer on openDemocracy, where the piece has also been hosted, as offering "little to substantiate" a cover-up, while David Elstein points out a number of flaws in Cusick's reasoning.  All of the investigations Cusick details apart from the Independent's took place while the relationship was on-going, before Whittingdale became culture secretary, although he was chair of the influential media committee.  Cusick claims that the Mirror may have dropped its investigation because Whittingdale could have launched a new inquiry into phone-hacking at the newspaper group, although does so in a half-hearted manner.  Similarly, without detailing how, Cusick implies that a similar investigation at the Mail on Sunday was dropped because Whittingdale was "viewed as an asset" by the Mail group.  Finally, Cusick details how things went with the Independent's own belated investigation, attempting to widen out the justification for a rather basic salacious story to claims about expenses not being paid, then to possible hypocrisy charges over Whittingdale's membership of the Cornerstone group.  Again, it ended with the editor shutting it down without apparent explanation.

To some, that four separate newspaper groups all failed to bring the story to print is indicative of a cover-up.  It's also certainly true that equally lacking stories about the private lives of politicians have been printed of late, including Brooks Newmark flopping the old johnson out of his pyjamas for an undercover hack, and the unforgettable Lord Sewel, in red bra, snorting cocaine off the breast of the sex worker who stitched him up.  A far more prosaic explanation is that even by the standards of those two stories, Whittingdale's adventures in online dating were much less exciting.  He's divorced, he didn't know King was a dominatrix in her spare time, and the only evidence they had were some very unrevealing photographs.  Why would the papers other than Independent drop the story on the basis Whittingdale could be useful to them in the future when they couldn't be certain of his career trajectory?  The Mirror phone hacking explanation also doesn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

This isn't to take the claims of former and current hacks at first sight.  As Francis Wheen quoted by Anorak has it, both the bizarre arguments being put forward by Hacked Off representatives that this was someone whose privacy should have been invaded, and the claims from the Thurlbecks and Wallises of this world are unbelievable.  Clearly the story was of interest to the tabloids, and the Independent; they just in the end decided it couldn't stand up.  I don't think Leveson is of any relevance here at all; the decision was simply made that MP unwittingly dates sex worker is a bit sad rather than scandalous.  You can see this in the way the Indie flailed around desperately for any justification long after the fact, as I described is always the way yesterday.  First you get the story, then you make something up to claim it's in the public interest.  Like Flying Rodent, I think this story would have been more in the public interest than the case the tabloids are up in arms about, but that's barely.  The reason why there's such a disparity is obvious, also: pop star up to shameless sexual antics sells papers; MP gets todger out on Twitter wins awards, if that.

Likewise, the cries from Labour that Whittingdale should stand aside from his role in directing legislation concerning regulation of the press due to his conflict of interest don't now really apply when, err, any conflict is out in the open.  The sword of damocles Chris Bryant lyrically brought up, even if we accept it was a thing despite there being no evidence, is now gone thanks to the exposing of the story.  As Roy Greenslade and others have argued, there does seem to be a lot of overstating of Whittingdale's role.  Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act shouldn't be imposed for the reason that it is grossly unfair, nor has there ever been a realistic suggestion it was going to be brought in; similarly, there is no appetite whatsoever among the Tories as a whole for staging the second part of the Leveson inquiry.  It's hardly just Whittingdale.  The same goes for bias against the BBC: the Tories don't like Auntie, simple as.  Whoever ends up being culture secretary you can guarantee will be just as critical as Whittingdale has been.

I can then understand why people think something stinks, agree this will certainly be something to bring up the next time a politician is caught with their pants down by a newspaper justifying their expose as in the public interest, and still think that on this occasion at least some are looking just that little bit too hard.  Which includes the BBC, Private Eye, et al, who now the story is out there are justified to ask the questions they have.  I also agree with Anna Raccoon when she writes on how Olivia King has every right to be thoroughly cheesed off with the press a whole.

Is that OK with everyone?

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4/13/2016 06:23:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 12, 2016 

Orwell, as ever, had it right.

We all know the famous Orwell line, don't we?  "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people who is banging whom".  Good ol' Eric Blair was thinking of the scandal involving the 3rd Duke of Massingberd, who was discovered in flagrante with a scullery maid called Bill, a dog called God and the young MP for Buckingham, Doris Bonkers.  Massingberd had succeeded in cowing most of the press through a combination of legal threats and blackmail, involving a recruited squad of bootblacks offering complimentary happy endings, only for an irrepressible young upstart from Australia called Wurzel to expose all concerned in his short-lived penny sheet the Fucks of the World.  Wurzel was sent to the Scrubs for 2 years for breaching the Obscene Publications Act, but Fleet Street was never the same again.

It's the humbuggery of it all that gets you more than anything.  The case of PJS and YMA has allowed the press to reprise their previous howls of rage from a few years ago over the brief super-injunction craze, despite the vast majority of such orders not being super injunctions as super injunctions prevented even the fact the order was in place from being reported.  It is after all remarkably easy to pose as a free speech martyr when your version of freedom of expression extends only as far as shag 'n tell and every so often running a borderline racist comment piece.  Say what you like about Charlie Hebdo, but no one is ever going to shoot up the offices of the Sun.

At least the Sun is entitled to feel pissed off its exclusive has been given out free to everyone.  What really grinds the gears is the "oh, we couldn't care less about all the sordid details, who did what to whom, but this is far more important than that" crowd.  No it isn't.   If you really couldn't care less about the sex lives of consenting adults, regardless of status, then you wouldn't be touching this "story" whatsoever.  No one involved prior to AB and CD going to the Sun was unhappy with what went on; they suddenly decided for whatever reason to get some cash out of it.  Only then are the angles on hypocrisy looked for, justifications however lacking or laughable clutched at.

At very best, there is the possibility the argument that persuaded the appeal court judges to grant the injunction, that the effect the revelation would have on the young children of PJS and YMA would be unfair on them, could be used by far greater scoundrels in the future to prevent disclosure of their wrongdoing.  That's all it is though, a possibility.  All the previous caterwauling over injunctions a few years back due to the danger to free speech failed to materialise.  Judges stopped granting them; celebrities stopped seeking them.  Why would anyone seek a gagging order that had the opposite effect?

So it is now with PJS and YMA, fairly or not.  They had an open relationship while supposedly giving the impression of being a committed, monogamous couple.  That turns out to have been enough for their slightly unorthodox sex life to be exposed, as it has been, if not by the English and Welsh press.  To regard this as some great crime against the right of the tabloids to make money you have to either be unbearably pompous, or part of an industry that defines the public's right to know on exactly such a pecuniary basis.

It would be easier to take also if say the rest of the media had rallied round when the Guardian was being threatened by the government with prior restraint over the Snowden leaks.  Instead the likes of the Mail took the side of the government and the securocrats.  GCHQ coming round and smashing the hard drive with the documents on is obviously one thing, while the danger posed by "unelected" judges deciding what YOU can and can't know about the disgusting proclivities of those who can afford to project an image is quite another.

Which leaves pretty much only the "absurdity" that it's just newspapers and England and Wales based media that can't name those involved.  Not that this stops them from running otherwise non-stories about them, say, or dropping the broadest of hints, or telling everyone precisely which sites are naming them.  When tabloids start playing the victim, the game ought to be up.  Rather sad when it's left to err, Holly Willoughby, to cut through the bullshit.

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4/12/2016 09:28:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 23, 2016 

Operation Midland: a modern morality tale.

Operation Midland has been closed down.  Announced on Monday, happily for the Metropolitan police while attention was on Westminster and before the events in Brussels, it had been in the offing for quite some time.  After around 15 months of investigations into claims of sadistic abuse perpetrated by figures from the very top of the defence, intelligence, political and entertainment establishments, at its conclusion there was not enough evidence to so much as submit a file to the Crown Prosecution Service for their consideration.  It had already been announced that Lord Bramall, the former chief of the defence staff, had been cleared of any involvement.  Monday saw Harvey Proctor, the only other accused still alive, told that he also would not face charges.

Even at this point, it's difficult to properly get your head round how the Met could have gone about investigating the allegations of a single man with such a level of seeming incompetence.  Operation Midland has been a disaster rivalled only by the anti-terrorist operations in the aftermath of 7/7, or the corresponding failure to properly investigate phone hacking at the News of the World at the first opportunity.  Some of the mistakes were made with the best of intentions, or at least that's what we have to conclude.  Otherwise, the Met looks even more headspinningly credulous.

As the Met belatedly recognised, it was a huge mistake for Kenny McDonald to describe the allegations made to his team by the man known only as "Nick" as "credible and true".  McDonald we were later told did not accept they were true; his aim in describing them as such was to reassure any other witnesses they would also be believed.  His team believed that as with Jimmy Savile, and others since convicted of historic sex offences, the publicity would encourage other witnesses to come forward and help corroborate Nick's story.  Only two witnesses did, and they came to the police through the same proxy as Nick, via Exaro News.  One of those witnesses was decided not to be credible midway through last year.

With no other witnesses to back up Nick's highly distressing account of abuse by VIPs, it was almost as if the police didn't properly know what to do, having already described their witness as telling the truth.  Their approach, knowing they didn't have even the beginnings of the evidence needed to arrest anyone, was to carry out searches of the homes of the accused still alive, and in the case of Leon Brittan, the recently deceased.  The raids on the homes of Lord Bramall and Harvey Proctor were accompanied by leaks to Exaro News, making their names public when the police were unable to.  The relationship between Exaro and Operation Midland was far too cosy from the very start, almost as if it was Exaro rather than Nick in control of events.  It was to Exaro that Nick first went, who then provided access to Nick to the BBC and the newspapers, most notably the Mirror group.  When the police came calling, Exaro at the least accompanied Nick; other reports have suggested they sat in on the interviews.

Nick's account itself should have set alarm bells ringing.  Not just that some of the details given by Nick of his abuse are highly reminiscent of the accounts provided by those who have claimed to be the victims of Satanic ritual abuse, with Nick claiming he was tortured on Remembrance Sunday, his abusers pinning a poppy to his chest repeatedly, but that those named and the locations where the abuse was meant to have taken place have been circulating online for years.  As the Times belatedly reported, the defunct magazine Scallywag claimed over 20 years ago that abuse by senior politicians had taken place at Dolphin Square; those articles have provided the backbone to conspiracy theories ever since.  Nick's account of his abuse developed over time: he first went to Wiltshire police in 2012, informing them only of the predation by his deceased stepfather.  The following year he spoke to a documentary team, alleging that he had been abused by groups of men that on a number of occasions included Jimmy Savile.  Come 2014, his story had expanded further to include Ted Heath, the former heads of MI5 and MI6, Lord Janner and Peter Hayman, as well as the murder of three boys.  As the Needle Blog has pointed out, his story seems a conglomeration of online conspiracy theories, the Scallywag articles and the varying allegations made against Savile and Janner, with added details that only he can explain.

By the time Harvey Proctor gave his extraordinary press conference in August of last year, detailing in full what he was being accused of by Nick, it was already apparent the investigation was falling apart.  Having at first given massive publicity to the allegations, if we're being extremely charitable believing McDonald when he pronounced them "credible and true", the coverage swung in the exact opposite direction.  The Mail and the Sun went after Tom Watson, more because of his new position of power as deputy Labour leader than anything else, before turning on commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, again more out of rage at the investigations the Met has undertaken into the press than real digust at the treatment of Bramall and Brittan.  Despite reports in the Mail and Telegraph that had began to cast further doubt on the police and Nick, it was BBC's Panorama, somewhat making amends for the corporation's role in first publicising Nick's claims, that piece by piece cast doubt on the police investigation and asked why it was they apparently hadn't done some very basic fact-checking.  The police's response was to demand it not be shown, while Exaro resorted to smears directed at Panorama's reporter Daniel Foggo.

The Met, as Matthew Scott writes, still seems to believe it has done little wrong.  They will not apologise for investigating "serious allegations of non-recent abuse", as though anyone is asking them to.  If anyone is asking for apologies rather than lessons to be learned, it's for the way Operation Midland went about its investigation, or arguably, didn't.  Hogan-Howe's attempt to regain the initiative, saying that perhaps the police should not automatically believe witness testimony given to them of abuse completely missed the point: everyone wants allegations of sexual abuse to be investigated, and properly.  Victims must have confidence they will be believed.  Public trust can also be damaged however when someone's testimony is declared to be true before it has even began to be investigated, not least when that testimony it subsequently becomes clear was, as even Exaro News's editor said, "very hard to believe".  As with so much else, a balance has to be struck: until recently it was often felt police forces failed to take sexual offences as seriously as other crimes.  The public interest is not served by a tilt too far in the other direction, where the reputation of individuals can be destroyed in a moment, never to recover, thanks to leaks to the media.

More than anything, the police and Nick have done a disservice to other victims of abuse, especially those who have been the victims of people in positions of authority.  Nick himself may not be a liar or a fantasist so much as so severely damaged by what he went through as child that he no longer knows the truth of what happened to him.  We don't know how he was treated for the problems arising from his abuse, or by whom.  The Met cannot say the same.

Nor though is it just the Met or Nick.  The media, Exaro especially, has played a dangerous game, having no real care for those entrusting them with so much, thinking only of the remuneration available, or possible political advantage.  Politicians played a similar role.  So too we have seen how social media has become an echo chamber rather than an arena for debate, where dissenting views are ignored and opinions reinforced rather than challenged.  We're left depending on the Goddard inquiry for the answers, which from the preliminaries looks as though it might turn into a 5-year long saga of successive witnesses detailing accounts of abuse.  The omens could hardly be worse.

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3/23/2016 11:33:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, March 21, 2016 

A sight for sore eyes (and minds).

Is there a finer sight for sore eyes than the Conservative party in full on civil war mode?  Forget Jodorowosky's Holy Mountain, witnessing the Tories scratching away at retinas, tearing out throats, calling each other idiots and screaming about sanctimony, especially after months of Labour's massively inferior equivalent has been like waking up from a coma, wiping away the built up sleep and seeing the world anew.  It's not just that seeing the party of government fall apart within the space of a couple of days, and over the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith of all people has been so wickedly delicious, it's that it's also demolished media constructs regarded as unassailable fact until they suddenly crumbled into dust.  Like how George Osborne is a tactical genius when it's been apparent for a very long time that he's all politics and no awareness.  And how the Tories will rule in perpetuity, despite their being just as divided as Labour, with only power holding them together.

You can to an extent understand just how discombobulated the likes of Matthew d'Anconservative have been by IDS flouncing out at this stage in proceedings.  If we are to accept IDS's sudden, almost Damascene realisation that he's in a government which is doing over the poorest and most vulnerable in order to keep the upper middle and above in the style to which they have become accustomed, then you have to first presume that IDS was possessed between 2010 and last year.  Who was this man who otherwise looked liked IDS, who as the Graun has it, was one of the most gross incompetents to ever hold the position of work and pensions secretary?  If it was him, he certainly kept his feelings about how the very policies he was instituting were affecting those who would never vote Tory but need protecting regardless.  Did he not read his own party's manifesto, which was explicit on how if returned to government they would raise the 40p tax threshold, increase the inheritance tax threshold to £1 million and carry on with corporation tax cuts while slashing £12bn from the welfare budget?  Sure, perhaps he like the rest of us didn't think his party would win a majority and so introduce those policies, but then again, was he still under possession when he cheered Osborne's living wage as those cuts were announced in last year's budget?  In his Marr interview IDS insisted he had considered going last year over very similar concerns then, only to back down.

IDS claimed to be motivated only by social justice, ensuring everyone gets a fair start in life.  You can quibble about whether IDS's chosen motives would in practice achieve this, but let's take him at his word.  The fact is that universal credit has been and is a disaster, made worse without doubt by how Osborne has repeatedly raided it, and yet it's IDS's baby, his policy.  You can't achieve the goals you want to if the system itself is a failure, as UC is.  Rather than take seriously the many criticisms made, IDS has acted with spite throughout, as he has when challenged on workfare, the bedroom tax, and all the rest.  To judge by the defence given by other ministers in the DWP, with the exception of the laughable Ros Altmann, independent pensions "expert" turned gatekeeper, he ran a tight team.  It only reinforces the belief that IDS had managed to convince both himself and his underlings that he was achieving great things while doing the exact opposite.

Who then was the one dragging his work down, who was undermining everything he thought he was working towards?  George Osborne, aided by Cameron at every step.  Last week's budget, with Cameron letting Osborne make the academies announcement, the sexing up of the OBR's remarks on the EU, the giveaways to the middle classes and above meant to keep them sweet, all was designed to speed Osborne on to the leadership.  IDS it's true doesn't have any leadership ambitions himself, but few assassins are after the top job themselves.  When you then have David Davis repeating the lines established by IDS, that this isn't a government dedicated to fairness, a claim echoed by right-wingers and overwhelmingly pro-Brexit MPs who two weeks ago delighted in supporting the changes to ESA, then you'd have to be a fool to see there isn't something else going on.

And yet many journalists spent yesterday telling the world just how convinced they were by IDS claiming this was purely about his no longer being able to put up with balancing the books on the backs of the poorest.  The Graun, after nailing IDS in a likely hastily written Friday night leader today pompously intones that "impugning motives is no way of dealing with arguments".  While it has obviously been novel to a hear a resigned cabinet minister contradict the Tory spin on how they are one nation party devoted to providing security to all regardless of background, you get the impression that hacks themselves had fallen into believing the lie.  Or if they hadn't personally, they imagine the public have.  That those who did vote for the Tories might have done so not because they were promising to provide security for all at the same time as walloping scroungers, but because they were promising to wallop scroungers doesn't seem to have registered.

Little wonder Cameron apparently called IDS a "shit" in their tete-a-tete on Friday.  He and Osborne came up with this winning formula, soaking those most likely to vote while doing little to nothing to help those who don't, and here's this incompetent attacking them for doing what they said they would!  When you have right-wingers attacking social liberals for being too economically right-wing, something is up.  That IDS and others lining up behind him are right on this occasion, pointing out Osborne has become a liability who shouldn't be getting the help he is doesn't make them right on anything else.  Their aim is to damage Osborne fatally, while also undermining Cameron on the EU vote by making clear his authority is waning.  Staying in doesn't look as secure an option when the man making the argument is no longer looking as solid himself.

Osborne certainly has come out of this looking once again the knave.  From the moment it was briefed in advance that cuts to PIP would be made in order to fund giveaways to the well-off it was apparent how this would turn out.  Not even Labour in its current state could fail to score presented with such an open goal.  What possibly made the Treasury think, having u-turned previously on tax credits, that the same wouldn't end up being the case when they were specifically targeting the disabled?  This wasn't a budget where it took a day or two to unravel; it was already an obvious dog as he sat down having delivered it.  Nor having spent the first part of his speech blaming foreigners and Labour for what he was having to announce can he do so without being laughed at.  The mess he's in is down to the fiscal charter, meant to trap Labour but now traps him, and the welfare cap, for which ditto.  He can't cut tax credits, so going after the disabled was the only other option that would have brought in the needed money to get his surplus.

He did nonetheless make the right choice in deciding not to go to the Commons to answer the urgent question on the unravelling of the budget.  He looks a coward, but considering he only has one apparent mode of communication, which is smarm, smirk and wind up, sending David Gauke was the likely better option.  Cameron then came along and did his best to calm everyone down, which has likely temporarily put a lid on things.  Make no mistake though: the past couple of days are only the first rumblings of what we can expect to transpire as the referendum approaches, and once Cameron announces the date for his stepping down.  There is no obvious successor, let alone an idea of what a post-austerity Conservative party will be for.  Nothing is written, nothing is set in stone, all is still to play for.  Plus, how glorious it is to be reminded of the enjoyment there is to be had when a party other than your own spontaneously combusts.

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3/21/2016 09:10:00 pm | | | links to this post

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