Wednesday, February 24, 2016 

The X Files: my part in its downfall.


(This is long, and if you'd prefer not to read about my adolescent love of The X Files, you can skip to halfway through where I review the new series.  If that's your bag.  Oh, and spoilers.)

I honestly cannot recall how I first came to watch The X Files.  I've got a nagging feeling that it might well have been when it was repeated on BBC2 late on a Friday night, although I might be confusing that with how I'm fairly sure the BBC repeated the first season later in the 90s.  My failure of memory seems fitting for how the show itself always held itself in a sort of vagueness: you could never truly trust what it seemed to be telling you was happening, just as Mulder and Scully couldn't trust anyone except themselves.

It's become something of an obvious go to that The X Files is symbolic of the 90s.  A decade that began with the dissolution of an empire, the crumbling, apparent extinction of any ideology other than ones that regarded the market as sacrosanct and unquestionable, the turn away from certainty towards the conspiratorial and the cynical, why wouldn't a show that contended we were all being lied to on a grand scale by governments and corporations and yet eschewed politics almost entirely be a smash hit?

On a personal level, though, The X Files to me truly is the 90s.  Memories fade of your actual day to day life, but the television shows, the films and the music you love remain, available not just to remind you but for you to relive.  It was a time before life, before I, got serious.  Quite why I somewhat precociously loved the show, as I must have started watching it when I was around 11, I again can't put my finger on exactly.  That said, I definitely identified with Mulder: the heroic, brainiac outsider, laughed at by his colleagues, toiling away down in the basement, trying to find the evidence that would prove him to be right.  In the first year of secondary school I put "Mulder" as my middle name on exercise books, and drove the English teacher up the wall with my constant reviewing of the novelisations of episodes, as well as naming characters in stories Fox and Dana.

And of course, you can't be an almost teenager on the cusp of puberty and not also have more than a bit of a crush on Scully/Gillian Anderson, as I'm sure a whole generation of boys (and girls no doubt too) did.  Unlike with other characters in shows that are often there to be little more than eye candy, or the token gorgeous woman among the males, there's not really anything to be embarrassed about in retrospect either.  Scully is attractive most of all because she develops into by far the most rounded character on the show, thanks not just to the writing but to Anderson's remarkable acting ability; she plays a character originally not much more than a foil to Mulder with such nuance, bearing and determination that after the first season she truly is his partner, rather than the sceptical subordinate following in his wake.

As for how when you think The X Files you think aliens and the paranormal, which angered a few of the more literal minded critics who saw it as being part of the Mumbo Jumbo takeover, that was never the important part for me.  I didn't then and definitely don't now believe in the supernatural, at least not the supernatural phenomenon they investigated.  I was far more interested in the "mythology" of the show than the possibility there could be some truth to the conspiracies featured.  Why would I want to get involved in looking to see if there's something more to our very dull reality when the one depicted in the show needed such deciphering on its own?

Looking back now, what once was satisfying because it didn't end, because nothing was ever truly, fully explained, is the show's biggest flaw.  The mythology doesn't add up, and those episodes centred on Mulder's pursuit of the truth, regardless of the danger it puts him and Scully in, resulting in the murder of his father and Scully's sister Melissa, Scully's cancer and miracle recovery, start to drag after you reach the fifth season.  By contrast, grown exponentially in my estimation have been the "monster of the week" episodes, the self-contained shows, the best of which are very special indeed.  Vince Gilligan, who as any fule kno got his start proper on The X Files before he went on to create Breaking Bad, is easily the most consistent, capable of both the deadly serious, as in Pusher or the light-hearted, such as in Je Souhaite.  What Darin Morgan started with his comedic episodes Gilligan perfected with Bad Blood, the 5th's season magnum opus, a vampire tale told from Mulder and then Scully's very different perspectives, and where you can see just how much fun everyone was having without it impacting on the quality as it so easily can.

As with so much else in life, the difficulty is in knowing when to let go.  The X Files really should have ended with season 7, as it was thought for a time would be the case.  Accordingly, the loose ends were sort of tied up: the syndicate behind the conspiracy involving the alien takeover of the planet was destroyed by the rebel aliens; Mulder discovered "the truth" behind his sister's disappearance; and in the last episode, Mulder himself is abducted and Scully reveals she is pregnant, despite having been rendered barren by her own abduction in the second season.  As it turned out, the show went on with David Duchovny, who having clearly tired of his role as can be seen in his performances, only appearing in a few of the 8th season's episodes. Robert Patrick, aka the T-1000, took over, with Scully becoming the believer and Patrick's character Doggett the sceptic.

While season 8 was in fact a significant improvement on season 7, this was the point where the "mythology" ought to have been stopped by the Colonel from Monty Python for having gotten too silly.  Mulder is returned, dead, half way through the season.  Only he's not dead, and is dug up, alive, after Scully realises their mistake.  Scully's pregnancy progresses, only for her to discover that her pregnancy is clearly incredibly special, such are the people who want her unborn child either dead or alive.  The season finishes with Scully giving birth witnessed by "super soldiers", actually alien replacements of humans, whom are under the impression that her son will be the leader of the resistance to their rule once the invasion begins.  They leave having decided this is not the case, only for it to turn out come the 9th season that William is indeed a special baby, so special indeed that he can turn the mobile above his cot purely with his mind.  Unable to protect him, and with Mulder on the run due to Duchovny leaving the show proper, she gives this telekinetic child up for adoption.

The series concluded for what is now the first time with Mulder on trial before a military tribunal for the murder of one of the "unkillable" super soldiers; duly found guilty, he somewhat easily escapes their clutches, the Cigarette Smoking Man receives a hellfire missile right up him, and Mulder and Scully put their faith in God preventing the alien invasion from taking place, religion having increasingly become an influence on the series courtesy of creator Chris Carter.

With it always having been the intention for there to be a series of X Files films, 2008's I Want to Believe wasn't the greatest shock when it came about.  Despite its critical reception, it's also rather good: a self-contained story about a psychic paedophile priest and his connection with one of his victims, it ends with Mulder and Scully in bed, again, apparently together and happy as the "shippers" always wanted.

Why then a new "event" series in 2015, other than for ratings and the money?  Are there still stories to be told about these two characters, indefatigable and apparently immortal as they are?  Is the time right, this far removed from 9/11, which by itself seemed to cleave the the justification for The X Files still existing in two, even while the series itself struggled on for another year and a bit?

The answer is possibly, so long as Carter does a George Lucas and gives someone else full control of any follow on.  For sadly, the reboot/event/whatever just about worked so long as he wasn't the person doing the writing.  The three episodes written by James Wong, Darin Morgan, and Glen Morgan, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th respectively are decent, brilliant and good.  James Wong's sort-of follow on from Carter's reintroduction episode is quick paced, features classic X Files motifs and themes with the genetic experimentation on children with rare diseases and syndromes plot, and has some satisfyingly nasty special effects.  Darin Morgan's Were-Monster episode is a complete joy, as though he and Mulder and Scully have never been away.  Filled with references to his past work, it's funny, makes fun of the show and the characters respectfully without for a moment mocking them, and is an answer in itself to the questions as to why all involved are still keeping on keeping on.  His brother's episode would have been a solid monster of the week back in the day: those familiar with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia might not be able to get by how the monster is known as the Trashman, a being willed into existence by a graffiti artist opposed to the displacement of the homeless and which takes revenge on those responsible, but otherwise it's as fine an entry into the canon as we had any reason to expect at this remove.

The same cannot be said for Carter's episodes.  The first show was always going to be partially about reminding of us how things were left off, and does have a few good lines.  Duchovny and Anderson are straight back into their roles, and well, that's about it.  As incomplete, contradictory and confusing as the "mythology" often was, why on earth would you suggest, yet again, that Mulder and by definition we also had been wrong all along?  Why would you make the deliverer of this truth a smarmy Alex Jones/Bill O'Reilly hybrid, and why would Skinner have ever taken him seriously enough to contact Mulder in the first place?  Why would Tad O'Malley have not just gone public with the alien replica vehicle he's constructed?  Surely the proof would have been enough regardless of the messenger?  Why would you apparently knock all this down again at the conclusion only to then reveal it was the truth all along in the event finale?

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.  The penultimate episode sees Carter decide to introduce jihadism to The X Files, for reasons known only to himself.  A suicide bomber miraculously survives the blast, and the FBI wants to extract any information it possibly can from the comatose fundamentalist, by any means necessary.  In what can only be put down to Carter writing the episode while on something himself, Mulder's proposed method is to trip on magic mushrooms, get on the same astral plane as the bomber and converse with him there.  We also meet two young FBI agents, and wouldn't you know it, but one's female, a redhead, a scientist and a sceptic, and the other's male, handsome and wants to believe.  Oh, and in a you really can't get away with this Chris palm to the face moment, the female agent's name is Einstein.  No, honest, it is.  Their existence can only be ascribed to Carter holding out the hope of continuing the series with these two if either Duchovny or Anderson decide not to go on, despite neither showing anything to suggest they could equal Doggett and Reyes, let alone Mulder and Scully.  The conceit turns out that Mulder goes on a clichéd journey into his mind in spite of only being given a placebo by Einstein, and he naturally does talk to the bomber, preventing a much larger cell from carrying out their attacks.  Someone I respect described it as the worst episode of the show full stop.

That accolade really should go to the finale instead, so lacking was everything about it.  What seems like a good half of the episode we spend with Scully explaining what's happening, or rather what isn't to Einstein, as though the two actresses are trying to convince themselves that the plot makes sense.  We must act quickly, Scully says more than once, reminding of Mark Kermode's review of Revenge of the Sith and his escalating anger at Lucas's own reliance on exposition.  Tad O'Malley it turns out was right all along, and rather than an alien invasion, as we thought was meant to happen on the 21st of December 2012 as the mythology previously implied, instead the takeover is to be heralded by a mass extinction of human life via DNA implanted in everyone through the smallpox vaccination, achieved once activated by the collapse of the immune system.  This is meant to explain why the invasion didn't happen and we're here now but just doesn't work, not least because Scully we learn via the re-emergence of Agent Reyes is one of the "chosen few" to survive, her DNA having been altered during her abduction.  This makes absolutely no sense, as Scully's survival along with the rest of those abducted and subjected to tests by the military in an attempt to current an alien-human hybrid depended on the chip implanted in her neck, with most of those subject to multiple abductions having had them removed and succumbing to cancer as Scully so nearly did herself.

Thankfully, Scully realises that her alien DNA can be used to create a vaccine against the now activated part of the err, smallpox vaccination, activated we're told via Tad O'Malley's show by chemtrails and possibly microwaves also.  Mulder meanwhile has been for the umpteenth time in the lair of CSM, who somehow managed to survive the massive explosion that happened right in his face and is still apparently in control of events.  Each meeting and showdown between Mulder and CSM since he first confronted him proper way back when Scully was returned in season 2's One Breath has been less climactic, and the pattern remains here.  With Scully having apparently saved the world, she rushes to find Mulder, himself stricken despite having also been abducted and tested on, only for an alien ship (or is it?) to appear overhead and the event to end on a completely miserable cliffhanger.

Could it have been any different?  Would it have been possible to resurrect the series without discounting the old mythology to an extent?  Perhaps not, but it could have been so much cleaner, so much better executed, not so seemingly lazy while also feeling strained.  Carter, it's sad to say, just seems to have ran out of ideas.  The show previously didn't, couldn't rely on him as much, not least when the shortest season was the ninth and which still came in at 18 episodes, and it meant that if you didn't enjoy the mythology then other writers with different ideas would be along shortly.  Here, and constrained to just the six episodes, there was barely any escape.

The X Files event was then a failure, albeit a noble one.  Mulder and Scully might be as strong personalities as ever, played with the same skill as was the case for the majority of the original run by Duchovny and Anderson, and yet they don't feel right in the middle of the 2010s.  The world has changed, and where our cellphone and internet using heroes were once ahead of the curve back in the 90s, they feel out of time now.  I hope this really is the end as the title legend of the concluding episode said, that characters I and so many others grew up with are allowed to go out with some dignity remaining, only that lack of ending suggests they won't be allowed to do so.  We never want to say goodbye to our friends and loved ones, but as we ought to have learned, in the end we have to.

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2/24/2016 10:29:00 pm | |

Sunday, July 12, 2015 

The most septic of isles (Or, ten years of this shit).

Would it really matter, if you were to count the days left with your hands? / Your focus secure and the loves you left, well / Smiles staged in photographs, here until

The only thing worse than having sex is not having sex.  The only thing worse than reading yet another article about Tinder and the brave new dating landscape while being a part of it is not being a part of it.  There are also times when you're fairly sure an article ostensibly about how we're the sexiest generation ever thanks to said innovations is rocking the snark only for it to then conclude this whole Tinder thing is in fact great.  I wouldn't know, as you need a Facebook account to use Tinder, and hey, I've got to draw the line somewhere.  Slim chance of meeting someone who both doesn't swipe left the minute they see my fizzog, and isn't interested only in the one bodily organ, versus being on social media?  The choice is there is no choice.

So here we are.  10 years ago today a stupid, lonely, angry, alienated and depressed 20-year-old started to write a blog.  Why I started I still don't really know, let alone why I've kept going for this long.  This, would you believe it, is the 3,799th post.  I frankly don't care to know how many words are contained in those posts but my guess would be in the millions.  The catalyst, obviously, was 7/7, and that was the barely hidden undercurrent running through Tuesday's post.  It's hard to separate what came after from that day itself when you spent the time immediately afterwards, or at least from the 12th, bitching about the reaction and indulging idiot conspiracy theories rather than recognising something clearly had changed.  The rules of the games might not have done, but it would be foolish to deny we had entered new territory.

In essence, the past 10 years have been about that.  Shouting about the injustice of it all, ticking off the tabloids, generally being about as much use as tits on a bull, hectoring from the sidelines and getting nowhere, yeah that just about sums it up.  Whatever the reasons behind starting to blog, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't hoped it would lead somewhere.  If nothing else, even if it was never likely to lead directly to a job considering how I've steadfastly refused to put my actual name to it and have never really tried promoting it or even maintaining a presence elsewhere, I thought it would perhaps count for something at some point.  10 years of writing a politics blog hardly anyone reads, won't that look great on the CV?  Proves I'm dedicated, right?  Dedicated to wasting my time certainly, and probably writing in office hours when no one's paying attention seems the most likely interpretation.

I of course protest too much.  I wouldn't have kept going this long if I didn't think I was having some impact, however oblique, however slight.  My initial motivations, as I wrote on the 5th anniversary, were complicated and let's be honest, more than a little sad.  Yes, to begin with at least I somewhat wrote as though I was talking to someone I barely so much as knew and who wasn't aware of it anyway.  Yes, this is the same person as written about here.  Yes, it's incredibly creepy, and I should probably just shut up and let it go.  I wish I could.  I hope though that if they're reading this now, that despite everything, they take it as a tribute.  Regardless of how, why, they inspired me.  This blog wouldn't exist without them.  They can take that in whichever way they want to.

It was also though about trying to stop my brain from turning into absolute mush.  I can say with utter certainty that if I hadn't started doing something, even if it was just writing purely for myself and not posting it online, my head would be even more fucked than it is currently. Blogging has  kept me somewhat sane.  How sane is open to question, but hey, I'm still here.  More to the point, it's also kept me honest to myself, been a constant challenge and helped to improve my writing immensely.  I'm still an abysmal judge of my own work and always will be, yet I would posit that despite how I'm no longer featured elsewhere as I once was, mainly thanks to how blogging itself or rather blogging as we knew it in 2005 has died on its arse, my writing has only increased in quality with each passing year.  I have off days, and there are quite a few posts from my early years I'm especially proud of, but I think I've hit a level of general consistency only occasionally broken into by those mockery posts we all love.

It's also more than a little frightening.  I've spent a third of my life spending most weekday evenings bouncing my thoughts, raves and rages against a wall of for the most part, complete indifference.  Why do we, I do this?  It's different from simply keeping a diary, especially as I try to convince myself that would be pure narcissism while this is something different.  What am I trying to achieve, what have I truly achieved, what am I going to achieve?  Probably very little, perhaps nothing.  Maybe I give voice to what a few select others think, who can't find the words themselves; maybe I just make for an occasional diversion.  Some days perhaps I'm good for a laugh, whether it's directed at me or along with me, either is fine.  To be sure, if there was no one reading then I wouldn't have kept going this long, and while that readership might have dropped slightly from its peak, let's just say there's more than enough still doing so to fight off the feeling of wasting my time.  At least for the most part.

All this said, I can't pretend that the stupid, lonely, angry, alienated and depressed 20-year-old has turned into a happy, well adjusted and content 30-year-old.  If I had, again, I most likely wouldn't be writing this post.  Am I more confident in my self though, more comfortable in my own skin?  Without a doubt.  That might just be the passage of time, and it probably is, but I'd like to think writing this blog has helped.  The bad times are still pretty bad, and last year's patch was the worst since the worst of times.  And yet I'm still here, for better, for worse.

I ended the 5th anniversary post by saying I couldn't promise another 5 years, and ahem, well.  Thanks then to everyone who's put up with my bullshit over the past ten years, to all my readers, anyone who's tweeted a link, sang my praises, ripped my rotten thought process to shreds, or simply lurked the entire time.  It means so much.  Here's to however much longer this most septic of isles stays afloat.

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7/12/2015 10:00:00 am | |

Monday, July 14, 2014 

An attack of morbidity.

Track-marked amoeba lands craft.  Cartwheel of scratches.  Dress the tapeworm as pet.

A few weeks back a friend (thanks as always, mate) and I paid a visit to Highgate cemetery.  Yes, Karl Marx, obviously, but it wasn't just his tomb I wanted to see.  It might seem more than a little creepy in these post-Savile times, having an interest in graveyards; all the same, they are always fascinating, humbling, evocative, beguiling places, and Highgate is one of the finest of its kind.

More than anything else, in death we are all equal.  In Highgate East the hulking monstrosity of Marx's cenotaph, paid for and constructed by the (Stalinist) Communist Party of Great Britain in the 50s, sits almost directly opposite the plain, minimalistic by contrast headstones of Chris Harman and Paul Foot, both members of the SWP, and both of whom died before its current troubles.  Foot's epitaph is a quotation from Shelley, while Harman's is from Brecht; Marx's, naturally, quotes himself.  At Marx's original resting place lies a slab noting the moving of his and his wife's remains.  It's riven by cracks, which if you were so inclined you could take either as a reflection on his legacy or what he might have thought of the cultish monument erected 70 years after his death.

Away from the "names", one headstone more than any other has stayed with me.  On it were the names of two children, who died the same day, at ages I think 5 and 7.  While there's a life beneath every plot, a history of someone who came into existence and then as we all must went out of it, behind this particular grave there had to have been a story more tragic than most.  Whether they died in an accident or something more sinister there was no indication, as there shouldn't be.  In creating a memorial to someone the emphasis ought always to be not on how they died, but how they lived.  Or, if they were taken too soon, how they could have lived.

Today I visited a cemetery closer to home, one I had been to not so long ago to celebrate a life, just not to see this particular grave.  As I searched for it, not remembering where it was, I looked at hundreds of headstones, dedications to husbands, wives, sons, daughters, all regretfully departed, all much loved, all people I didn't know.  Yet I found myself tearing up, reminded of how fleeting this experience we call being alive is, of the cruelty when it is snatched away, of the pain caused by parting regardless of the time spent together.  The babies who expired within hours or even minutes of taking their first breath of air, if indeed they ever did.  The children who never reached adulthood.  The former partners, in death reunited.  The murder victim, justice finally achieved for her last year.

Having been severely depressed, not to mention disposed to ruminating on such things, I've probably thought about dying more than I care to relate.  Except, not really.  As I sat before my brother's headstone, talking to him, paying my respects to someone I never knew, never could have known, crying my eyes out, as I'm doing again now, it hit me that all the images my mind has conjured up have been but the most wretched facsimile of what my actual death would be like.  Not for me personally, as I'm unimportant, as I've always been.  I don't hold to the bullshit we are all unique, beautiful creatures line when we are most certainly not.  However, to the people that matter, who really matter, you are exactly that, like it or not, despite it often not seeming that way.

Life makes no sense.  For years I've tried to quantify exactly why it is I feel the way I do, whether there's anything I could have done to change my path, how it is I ended up here.  Should I just be happy to have lived the way I have?  Can I be?  You tell yourself how extraordinarily lucky you are, by historical standards, by quality of life standards, by being born in a western democracy no matter how many things there are wrong with it, and yet it still feels hollow.  I think of what is I thought I wanted, how simple, how pitiful it is.  Then I look at the alternative solution I've lusted after more than anything, anyone else, how encompassing it is, how it seems to offer release.

But at what cost?

Fell asleep.  Dearly loved.  Sadly missed.  We'll meet again.  Our darling Rich.

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7/14/2014 11:59:00 pm | |

Monday, October 28, 2013 

Thoughts on the end of the liberal conspiracy.

Liberal Conspiracy is gone.  It's something that's clearly been approaching for a while, such has been the dwindling number of posts, but it's still rather sad.  My thanks go out to Sunny for considering my witterings to be worthy of occasionally featuring there, and I wish him luck in his future ventures.  This also seems as good a time as any for a brief interlude of introspection, so here we go.

Sunny pulling the plug on LC is indicative of where blogging has gone over the last couple of years, which is pretty much down the toilet.  Perhaps I just haven't kept up, but away from the group blogs it seems moribund.  A few are still going fairly strong, others aren't updated as regularly as before, while plenty have thrown in the towel.  Clearly, individual blogs can still grow exponentially, for which see Wings Over Scotland, it's just they need a well-defined niche.

I would say this, but for me the real explanation for the decline isn't the mainstream media coming late to the party and overtaking the amateurs, it's that most writers now spend their time on Twitter rather than blogging.  Each to their own and everything, I just don't like the format and way it inevitably leads to circle jerks, as well as the tendency it inspires in trying to one up those you disagree with, which leads absolutely nowhere.  It also seems to lead some to believe that Twitter, or rather their followers and those they follow are the internet, the culmination of which seemed to be the "boycott" of August.  I'd like to think blogging broadens rather than limits horizons, while social networking in general does the opposite.  Might just be me.

It may also be somewhat to do with how ghastly politics is and has been for the last couple of years.  People seem to have tuned out to the point where Russell Brand being his normal, half-berk half-idiot savant self inspires more comment than anything in months.  You can focus when the government of the day is doing one or two things that are spectacularly ill-advised and wrong; when the coalition seems determined to bugger things up on so many different levels, it tends to inspire apathy rather than opposition.  With so many struggling to make ends meet it also leaves you determined to make the most of the leisure time you have, and while I might be the kind of sad bastard who likes smashing out hundreds of words every day, plenty of others who might have started out before think better of it now.

All this said, I for one am still fairly happy to keep going on.  I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought of putting an end to Obsolete/septicisle or whatever stupid name this site has quite a few times down the years, but for one reason or another I've continued.  Why stop now that the "competition" is dwindling?  Let's give it till Christmas, at least.

(Thanks to everyone who does humour me.  And if you're still reading, thank you especially.)

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10/28/2013 06:09:00 pm | |

Monday, September 10, 2012 

1924 - 2012.


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9/10/2012 10:12:00 pm | |

Monday, November 15, 2010 

A short, disjointed post on nothing in particular.

As Chris argues, the measuring of happiness or well-being as something of a counterbalance to GDP would look on the surface to be likely to lead to more left-wing policies being pursued.

Just as interesting as whether those who are religious are more contented with their life than those with no faith (with the policy implications of such results) would be whether those on the left or right tend to be happier. I can only go by what my answers would be to the possible questions featured at the end of this Grauniad article, drawing on the World Values Survey, which would be almost wholly negative as an indicator; would it be strange if those most in favour of such measuring were in fact among the least happy with their lot? One of the most immediately obvious problems with such measuring is that it operates and concentrates on one's view of self, which can be especially twisted, rather than their view of society and life outside of their own minds, to which I for instance would answer completely differently. It can also be knocked completely out of whack simply by coincidence: if I was answering the how happy were you yesterday question today then small things like Arsenal winning and Chelsea being beaten at home by Sunderland would impact on it rather massively. Perhaps what we really need is a schadenfreude measurer.

It also relies on honesty, which as the merest glance at this survey reported in the Sun makes clear, we all have major problems with. Only a third watching porn online, and the average sex session lasting 20 minutes? Some of us it seems have nothing on Billy Liar. Eric Joyce in what isn't really a post on Phil Woolas notes this: our politicians, like it or not, reflect ourselves. Many of us are living lies, and tell lies to either keep our jobs or stay on benefits. We expect better from our elected representatives when we ourselves are weak. We rant and rave when we ourselves are hypocrites. We are nakedly self-interested, and come up with arguments that put the case for ourselves whether we intend to or not. The same doctors that Joyce has making irrational arguments about student fees despite going on to earn six-figure salaries are those that are convinced they know best about how alcohol should be more heavily-taxed to cut back the harm it does to society. This ignores the impact it will have on those who drink not to get drunk but to make life slightly more bearable - and so could despite good intentions improve our physical health yet impact considerably on our mental well-being. And so we come full circle.

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11/15/2010 11:49:00 pm | |

Monday, August 16, 2010 

Why I'm not joining the Labour party.

You might recall that a couple of months back I wrote a pretty dreadful off-the-cuff piece on how I might be joining the Labour party, having been moved to reappraise my long opposition to the party while in power. Since then I've reappraised the reappraisal, and moved by Sunny's decision to join, it's worth taking a look at the reasons why now isn't the time to do so.

First off, the only real legitimate reason to join Labour at the moment is to vote in the leadership election. The party certainly hasn't since the general election presented any real reason to join it through its performance in opposition, which has been woeful at best and damning at worst. True, the party has been more concerned with the election of that new leader than anything else, but that hasn't stopped the current old shadow cabinet from deciding to oppose the bill setting up the referendum on the alternative vote on the specious grounds that the equalising of constituencies will amount to gerrymandering. To go from supporting AV to ostensibly opposing it in just over three months is an absolutely ludicrous position, and bodes ill for how the party intends to fight the coalition over the next potential five years. Whilst it's perfectly reasonable to want to have a say in who leads the opposition, we all know that it's going to be a Miliband. And again, while it matters which Miliband it is, and my preference would be Ed, it isn't going to make that significant a difference: both will undoubtedly keep the party either dead in the centre or move it very slightly to the left. Indeed, the only candidate who might move it further would be Diane Abbott, and she isn't going to win.

Sunny makes a good, but hardly watertight case in his piece for joining something, just almost certainly not Labour:

I don’t think it’s possible to sit by idly while the Coalition tries to better Thatcher in destroying the welfare state. I wanted to get involved in the fight-back but I also wanted to be part of a political movement that articluated an alternative.

Trouble is, we don't yet know just how far the coalition is going to go. Admittedly, the omens are far from good, and there's already much to oppose which has so far been suggested, but we're not going to find out just where the cuts are going to fall and how heavily until October. Sure, we should start to mobilise now, yet from within Labour? Almost certainly not.

Why? Because the candidates for the leadership have not even begun to articulate that alternative. The hustings so far have been raking over the past, which any party which has just lost power needs to do, yet with the exception perhaps of Ed Balls none of the candidates have set out a course on what they need to do now to oppose the coalition, let alone rebuild the party to an extent where it can win again. All of them have successfully identified areas of policy which Labour while in power got wrong, and in their Fabian essays, probably the best distillation so far of where they stand and where they're going, all recognise that the party has been too managerial, that it triangulated far too much and that it lost the support of core voters for various different reasons whom they need to win back. Andy Burnham, bless him, even makes an attempting at rehabilitating "socialism", even if he has to pair it with that other should be dead New Labour buzzword "aspirational" to do so. None of this however at the moment amounts to anything other than fine words, nor should we be surprised that it doesn't. When the coalition itself doesn't yet know how hard and how fast it's going to cut, we can't expect them to build an alternative to something which itself doesn't yet exist. Hence why joining Labour now is a daft idea: let's first see what the new leader does when the time comes.

We shouldn't however got our hopes up even then. At the moment most are assuming that even if the coalition lasts the full five years, Labour will be able to effectively clean up, such will be the anger over the cuts, the wholesale desertion from the Liberal Democrats of the floating voters and general discontent at how things will have gone. What though if that doesn't happen? What instead if this is Labour's turn to experience what the Tories did from 1997 to 2005? Just like the Tories suffered from being unable to exorcise the ghost of Thatcher, such was the grip of Blair and Brown over Labour that we now have a whole group of leadership candidates whom with the exception of Diane Abbott can be identified either as Blairite or Brownites, fairly or not. As much as the party might want to move on, it's struggling to do so for the simple reason that none of the candidates even begin to represent a clean break from the party's period in government. This would have been different if either Jon Cruddas or even John Denham had decided to stand, neither of whom fit comfortably into either category, have their own ideas and could have at least been in with an outside chance of winning. Moreover, even with many of the shadow cabinet retiring or returning to the backbenches once the leadership election is over, it's not clear where the new blood is going to come from. It's in all likelihood going to take until 2015 for the rising talent and new MPs to make a proper impact, conveniently maybe for when Labour needs to choose its next leader.

Sunny also writes:

Given the Coalition’s agenda, the time to just shout from the sidelines and hope the system changes is over. We have to campaign for it and get involved in the political system. We have to try and influence that direction. Labour’s values used to be different, and it can change again. That doesn’t necessarily mean political wilderness, because

Labour is at an intellectual juncture with the centrists devoid of ideas, vision or energy. It’s no wonder many of them are now joining the Coalition as advisers.


The problem is that it isn't just the centrists who are devoid of ideas: the entire party is. The party's election manifesto, lest we forget written by Ed Miliband, is testament to that, and even with the addition of his thinking on a living wage rather than simply a minimum one it remains a tired document, just as the party itself is tired. It needs revitalising, but while those previously outside the party can help it's fundamentally the role of those inside to recognise such is the case, and they show no indication of doing so. This is, as Jamie so succinctly puts it, the party of Phil Woolas. It's the party of Alan Johnson, declaring that he doesn't think anything the party did which affected civil liberties was wrong. It's the party of Jack Straw, disingenuous, dissembling and the consummate politician to the very last. Labour as it stands is an authoritarian, centralising and centrist party which has yet to even begin to realise where it went wrong, and in the shape of David Miliband at least has little to no inclination to change any of that.

If the cuts turn out to be as harsh as we fear them to be, let alone if the feared double-dip recession becomes reality, then the real opposition to them is unlikely to be led by Labour but instead by the trade unions and at the grassroots. The record of Labour support for such campaigns in the past has been sketchy at best, despite so many current Labour MPs and indeed leadership candidates expressing horror at their own memories of the 80s, and there's no reason to assume anything will be different this time, especially as Labour's connections with the trade unions continue to dwindle as MPs and activists fail to find common cause. A single member, even one as well connected and influential as Sunny, is highly unlikely to make much difference on that score.

Sunny concludes:

Labour has to become pluralist, outward-looking and visionary. It needs conviction in the values that it was founded on. It needs to attract back millions of voters. I feel I can better campaign for that from within the party than outside it.

All of this is true. Key will be whether the party itself is willing to be receptive to those aims, and at the moment it seems to be interested only in power for its own sake, just as it was after 97, rather than in any great internal soul-searching. I could be too pessimistic: this time next year the new leader might have articulated the alternative to the cuts in such a way that makes the coalition's blaming of Labour for everything start looking like the big fat lie which it is; the party might be leading the opposition to the worst, most destructive cuts while recognising and supporting alternatives elsewhere; it could have left behind the Blair and Brown years and be outlining the beginnings of a new era of Labour thinking; and it could have dislodged, even abandoned the authoritarianism and centralising nature previously inherent within the party. Equally, it might be just as much in the doldrums as it is now. Either way, joining the party at this time will change nothing. The left needs to unite and fight; it just doesn't need to do so from within the confines of a party.

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8/16/2010 09:53:00 pm | |

Friday, July 30, 2010 

A paean to charity shops.

I'll be the first to admit that only slightly less depressing than a high street full of empty shops is one consisting almost entirely of charity shops. This shouldn't necessarily be the case however. When done right, they can be fabulous places and the "big names" usually manage to do the difficult job of balancing off the unsellable tat from the genuine bargains which they get donated, and to be fair, they can only work with what they're given; it's usually the more obscure, locally based organisations in outlets where the paint is almost invariably peeling which let the side down. Even then though they're always worth a quick browse, especially if they've got a hefty CD rack, where I can almost always manage to find one single or another from the 90s to add to my unhealthily sized collection of dance music and incredibly guilty pleasures, or sometimes both.

Best of all though are the dedicated second hand charity bookshops. Admittedly, for the most part the fiction sections are usually full of intolerable trash, although I've still managed to pick up some Will Self from my local one. Where it continues to amaze me is in what it gets outside of the holiday reading cast-offs. Last time I paid a visit I picked up a first edition hardback of Roy Jenkins' biography of Churchill (complete with message inside from whomever gave it as a Christmas present), as well as Francis Wheen's Tom Driberg biog and have in the past got E.H. Carr's multi-volume history of early Soviet Russia, Bakunin on Anarchy, David McDuff's superb translations of both Crime and Punishment and the Brothers Karamazov and too many other great discoveries to list. Today's haul still must be one of the best yet:

The Prophet Armed - Trotsky 1879 - 1921 by Issac Deutscher (paperback) (also previously got his rather thin Stalin biog from the same place)
Michael Foot by Mervyn Jones (hardback)
As If by Blake Morrison (hardback)
The Gulag Archipelago - Second Volume by Solzhenitsyn (paperback) (got the first from the same place some time back, as well as the First Circle and One Day in the Life of...)
Kalki by Gore Vidal (paperback)

How much? £5.50 the lot. I also nearly picked up Peter Ackroyd's biog of Thomas More, but thought it'll probably still be there next time.

Every town deserves a similar shop, and for every dismal, run-down charity hovel attempting to sell mouldy boardgames, hornpipe trousers and flowery 70s shirts, there's one that's hosting a treasure trove, even if not one to you personally, just waiting to be discovered. Try it sometime.

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7/30/2010 08:56:00 pm | |

Monday, July 12, 2010 

5 years of Obsolete/septicisle.

(In case you couldn't guess, this is going to be one of those self-indulgent, personal posts which I'm sure you all love.)

Blitz spirit. Even by the standards of this blog, the very first post I wrote was about as inauspicious a start as you can imagine. 5 years later, it's frankly embarrassing. Some of the points made it in are defensible, such as the contempt expressed for a hastily cobbled together Panorama following the walking wounded from the attacks of the previous Thursday, as was the assault made on Labour MPs for attacking George Galloway when he stated the bleeding obvious. Linking the attacks directly to the bombings going on in Iraq itself was more tenuous, while my description of a bereaved parent expressing her anguish, even in front of the cameras, as "the wailing and gnashing of teeth", "nauseating", "stomach-churning" and finally, just to really labour the point, "crazy" was disgraceful. The references to capitalism were hackneyed, while the final paragraph is beyond idiotic: according to my 20-year-old self, this was an attack without ideology behind it, without reason. The point I was trying to make, or at least I assume I was, was that these weren't holy warriors but criminals, except it instead comes across as attempting to excuse any religious influence they may have had, however out of step, extreme or misguided their political interpretation of Islam may have been. I was trying to defend Muslims, I suspect, from guilt by association. Laudable maybe, yet not expressed anywhere near adequately.

The themes which were going to develop into whole streams (even torrents) of posts are also there, for better and worse. On the plus side, the suspicion of the pushing of any media narrative, of trying to frame a reaction based on how they think we should respond, rather than how we ought to respond, the positive cynicism of how out of place any sort of "blitz" style defiance really was. On the negative, the trap I've often fallen into of deciding to emphasise only one group of "victims", while occasionally treating those with views different to mine as poisonous or irrational, as shown by the recent spectacularly ill-judged and badly explained post on Linda Bowman which was more than deserving of all the criticism it received. And then there's the casual espousal of one of the dumbest conspiracy theories of the time, something which it took a while for me to reject entirely, even if I didn't wholly embrace it either, keeping it as a possibility, however remote.

Why I suddenly chose on the 12th of July 2005 to start letting the wider world into my thought process is difficult to explain. Even I'm not entirely sure why I did, let alone why five years on I'm still spending endless amounts of time filling a very tiny corner of the internet with often impenetrable, convoluted, badly argued left-wing warbling. There was anger there directly about 7/7, undoubtedly, but not really at the mass murder itself; more at those who then immediately afterwards decided that such an attack had been inevitable, even while refusing to accept that it was as a direct result of our foreign policy post 9/11 that the threat had increased so massively, alienating and radicalising in equal measure. That might even be my slant in 2010 on why I began blogging, such has my view changed in the five intervening years. 7/7 was the catalyst, certainly, yet not the underlying cause.

At the beginning of 2003 I was almost certainly what would be termed clinically depressed, and I deteriorated further as the months passed until I was severely depressed, or in my case, suicidal, as they don't always go hand in hand. I've written about this somewhat before. I struggled through my A-levels, but decided I couldn't, regardless of my results, possibly deal with going on to university in September as I'd planned. I felt I could probably manage it the following year, giving me more than 12 months to recover fully, and as I got somewhat better by the time it was to fill in the forms again, reapplied, albeit deciding I didn't want to do a BA in journalism after all, plumping instead for English. I thought I was ready, even if I was by no means the same person in any shape or form that I was prior to 2003. As it turned out, I wasn't, and wasn't even capable of getting out of bed on the day of going to confirm I would be starting the course.

Anger, despair, isolation, loneliness, alienation, depression, fury, contempt, self-righteousness, self-pity, shyness, timidity. I was all of them, and they were all of me, however contradictory. I felt a failure, and I still do, or rather, I am. Another 9 months on and I still wasn't doing anything. I needed something to try and distract myself, something to take my mind off other things, something to at least give the impression, even if just to myself, that I was putting my mind to some use other than just ruminating and vegetating. My rage against the Iraq war, the illiberalism of New Labour, the lies and deceptions of the tabloid press, especially the Murdoch media which backed the government to the hilt on both were all rumbling underneath, as they had been for some time. I'd already been reading some blogs, although nowhere near the breadth which I was shortly going to have to. Then 7/7 happened, despite my adherence to the thesis Adam Curtis had put forward in the Power of Nightmares. No wonder I was willing to entertain conspiracy theories.

Here comes the part I'm unsure about admitting, or revealing. As addictive as blogging is, would I have kept going if I hadn't approached it from the way I always have? That I wasn't writing really for myself, or to achieve anything in particular, as much as I have always maintained that I have, but instead doing it for someone, however obliquely? That whenever I put something down, it's been as if they were the one it was personally intended for, even if there was next to no chance they were actually reading it, and indeed, they wouldn't have for more than the first year as they were completely unaware of it? Writing from the perspective of almost talking to someone and including the necessary background and backup from outside sources is what I've always intended to do; does the person I was almost addressing it to then matter?

Probably not. I've never been a good judge of my own work, as I tend to be far too self-critical. Self-critical is being too kind; self-hatred, utter visceral loathing of myself is more like it. It's only rarely that I think anything I've done has been worthwhile, let alone worthy of actual praise, which I also don't take well. There have been wholesale disasters along the way, which I'm much better at identifying, such as this "hilarious" post after the death of Bernard Manning, which I cringed at when I came across again the other day. The aforementioned post on Linda Bowman also falls into the same category, as does my being taken in, along with a myriad of others at least, by Karen Matthews, attacking those tut-tutting at her in the tabloids, not to mention also the recent precious post on joining the Labour party, which was dreadful. There definitely are some posts I'm more proud of than others, such as this one which I regularly link to, on the rendition report by the Intelligence and Security Committee, which got almost no coverage elsewhere despite moving the goalposts to ensure that the security services were innocent of being involved directly in extraordinary rendition, and also, perhaps to counter-balance the Bernard Manning debacle, this take on how the search for Madeleine McCann might still be going on in 16 years, aimed squarely at the media's complete loss of anything approaching journalistic values as reports and new angles were demanded despite there being no developments.

If being threatened with legal action is a measure of success, then those two occasions on which I have been are at least something to savour. At one point this site was voted the 18th best left-wing blog in the country, and the "best" of this site intermittently gets mirrored over on Liberal Conspiracy, ranked as the 2nd in the nation's affections by Wikio. Most humbling though has been that my piss-poor ramblings have inspired far better writers than myself, such as Mr Vowl, to start their own blogs and put my efforts to shame.

As for myself, the anger and the depression, without which this would have never started, has somewhat dissipated. I can't pretend it's disappeared and that I'm just going through the motions, yet I can't also say things are the same. That really would be a sad state of affairs five years later. Things haven't changed enough, that's for sure, yet I don't think I'd have it any other way. Well, I would. It's just never going to happen.

Most of all though, this blog would obviously be nothing if no one read it. As much as I joke about being read by all of two people and one of them is me, the readership is at least somewhat wider than that. It means a lot, and thanks to all of you, for humouring and indulging me more than anything. While I can't promise another 5 years, here's to Obsolete/septicisle continuing for some time yet to come. And thanks again.

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7/12/2010 07:15:00 pm | |

Thursday, June 24, 2010 

Why I (might) be joining the Labour party (for at least a year).

This blog has been running for very nearly 5 years. In that time, it could probably be classified as being written by a stereotypically angry leftie who felt dispossessed from the movement he felt he ought to be comfortable within, if not proud to say he belonged to.

Well, nothing's changed, or at least has with me personally. I still feel dispossessed from the movement I should be able to belong to; I'm still a stereotypically angry leftie, still naive and still completely uncertain of my own surroundings. The change, it has to be admitted, is that the government I found myself raging against which I felt I ought to be able to at least sympathise with, is now no more.

Frankly, I should have taken a reality check a long time ago, but a change of government to the traditional opposition is something that always results in a reappraisal. I can't help but wonder, especially in the aftermath of this week's budget, whether Polly Toynbee and those like her have had a point all along; that while the economic situation for so long was, if not rosy, at least neutral, that we took it for granted and instead focused to the detriment of inequality on civil liberties and also foreign policy.

Before I start recanting almost everything I've written over those 5 long years, all I'm admitting is that she has something approaching a point. Civil liberties should never have become a middle class concern because they affect everyone equally; it's the Labour party and the authoritarian streak which it has always had which ensured that was the case.

While in government, there was never the slightest possibility that I could have justified to myself being a member of the Labour party. I was never going to be able to have the slightest impact on party policy. In that sense, nothing has changed. I'm still highly unlikely to have the slightest impact on party policy. I can however, this time, at the very least vote for the next leader of the party. I can at least attempt to make my voice heard.

I'm not completely decided yet. And it's true, I could make a different case, in fact probably a far better one, for joining the Greens and helping to build them as a real alternative. I've voted for them the same number of times as I have for Labour after all (both times in the European elections, and last month, which I don't in the slightest regret. I've voted for Labour twice locally and, to my still eternal regret, in 2005, in a futile attempt to save a doomed MP who had at least abstained on the war and voted against the worst of the anti-terrorism legislation). They'd probably be far more in tune with my actual views though, and as this blog perhaps has shown, where's the fun in being in a party where people actually agree with you? Complaining, moaning and conducting why-oh-why exercises like this one are far more fun and intellectually nourishing, if not actually helpful in the long. Oh, and I can join for the colossal sum of a whole pound, so it's not even that I'm vastly contributing to the coffers or a party which will take my money, ignore me, and carry on as before, as it undoubtedly will. You can of course, if you so wish, persuade me otherwise. And let's face it, the more votes that go to people with names other than Ed Balls, Andy Burnham and David Miliband the better.

Update: This has been crossposted over on Lib Con, with the usual fine debate following in the comments.

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6/24/2010 10:37:00 pm | |

Friday, May 21, 2010 

Forget the horror here.

I'm one of those truly strange people that dreads being pulled away from the familiar, yet when thrust straight back into the old, miserable, mundane routine it's only then that I realise just how mechanical my daily existence in fact is. This cycle then repeats next time, a microcosm of how my life itself has turned out.

This is perhaps to be expected: there's quite a disconnect between sitting on a hill above a beach one day, in a glorious seaside town that seems to have escaped the degradation and decline the larger resorts on the coast have come to be known for, only to be returned the next to what often seems to be a city which has absolutely everything for sale but nothing that you'd ever want to buy. To go from somewhere where you could almost imagine yourself being able to shrug off all your doubts, loosen your convictions and settle into something approaching contentment, to then be almost instantly transferred back to the place that haunts you in so many ways, which culture seems to have bypassed, where the concrete itself seems to envelop you, to steal the soul which it so definitively doesn't have, is always going to have a jarring effect.

Within a week I'll have forgotten everything, and be back in the position of loathing even the suggestion of leaving this foul, stained keyboard alone for more than a day. Life will continue to rise to reach the oh so familiar plateau; my fears and prejudices will be half-swallowed, as ever, until they rise, as they will, to overwhelm everything once again. The city will stay dark and moribund, even in the heat like today, a backwater I may as well be imprisoned in, only with an incredibly long ball and chain. Until the next time. Until the next time.

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5/21/2010 08:44:00 pm | |

Thursday, March 11, 2010 

Social networking refuseniks.

I suspect, although I might be wrong, that I'm one of the few regular bloggers (not to mention also of a certain age) that hasn't also embraced the wonders of Facebook and/or Twitter. There are a few reasons behind this, especially the way that I'm not comfortable with revealing who I actually am, both in terms of my name and in posting photographs, which I loathe taking of myself in any event. I also dislike the whole erosion of privacy which comes with both, regardless of whether you hide behind a false identity or not; nor do I understand why other people would care what I'm doing at any precise moment. For those that have plenty of friends, or even just online friends, and are completely at ease with the past, I'm sure they're great and a wonderful way to keep in touch, I just don't think they'd add anything to the already pristine brilliance of my existence.

Are there then any other social networking refuseniks out there that do pretty much everything else on the net, including blogging, and yet don't get involved with these sites? I'd be genuinely interested to know, or even if you're just a refusenik that doesn't blog, with your reasons why, or just an acknowledgement. And no, I don't want persuading of just how fabulous Facebook and Twitter are. I'm not alone, right?

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3/11/2010 09:53:00 pm | |

Friday, January 22, 2010 

A short response to Edlington and David Cameron.

I'm sure you'll forgive me for not writing anything too extensive tonight, although if you want to read my response to all the comments on the post below it's now there, finally.

What I will do is link you to Unity's post on the sentencing of the boys who committed the terrible crime in Edlington, my own post from when they pleaded guilty, which still stands up pretty well in my admittedly biased eyes, and which also makes me deeply anxious about the media response we're likely to see tomorrow morning.

And no, Mr Cameron, it is not responsible to describe the crime committed by those two brothers, however horrendous and wicked, as "evil". You, more than anyone else, should be careful with your words and remember that we are dealing with children here, not adults. Stop trying to make political capital out of terrible but extremely rare events, which do not in any way, shape or form show that society as a whole is broken.

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1/22/2010 10:59:00 pm | |

Thursday, December 03, 2009 

25 years of poison.

25 years ago to the day, the worst industrial disaster in history took place in Bhopal, India. 8,000 to 10,000 people died within 72 hours; the number of deaths attributable to the release of Methyl isocyanate from the Union Carbide plant has since risen to around 20,000, with as many as half a million affected in some way.

25 years ago to the day, I was born.

In my more spiritual, bullshit, irrational moments, I like to imagine that despite the fact that I came into conciousness long before I was actually delivered, and that reincarnation in any event is laughable, that one of the souls which broke free from its corporeal body in such a brutally painful fashion flew half-way around the world and entered mine as I properly entered the world. Feel free to laugh. It sounds good though.

There is though the most tenuous of further connections. Chances are, I myself wouldn't be here if the youngest of my three elder brothers hadn't died in an accident when he was 5 years old. In a way, I was the replacement, right down to being born on the same day as he was, a coincidence rather than a conscious attempt on the part of my parents, as far as I'm aware. We do incidentally share the same hair colour but not the same personality, although you can't exactly know for sure how his would have changed had his life not been cut so short.

While the personal tragedy of my own existence continues, the genuine tragedy, the outrage which took place in Bhopal goes far beyond ordinary disgrace into extraordinary, deadly farce. As Indra Sinha concludes:

When people ask, "Why is the disaster continuing? Why has the factory not been cleaned? Why have Union Carbide and Dow not faced justice?", the answer is this: Union Carbide's victims are still dying in Bhopal because India itself is dying under the corrupt and self-serving rule of rotten leaders.

For me at least, however bad this sounds, it rather brings things into perspective.

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12/03/2009 09:17:00 pm | |

Thursday, April 09, 2009 

Frustration and terror raids.

This week has been deeply frustrating, not having the internet at home, my entire phone line still being completely dead, although Tiscali have finally put BT engineers onto the case, because despite it being ostensibly a "holiday" week with parliament in recess, the news has hardly been slow, what with the emergence of the video footage of Ian Tomlinson being assaulted, the arrest of the two boys in Doncaster in what seems like a chilling echo of the murder of James Bulger, which the tabloids have predictably leapt upon, as have the equally shameless Tories (although only following Labour's own politicisation of the Bulger killing), with Chris Grayling reprising his somehow worse than Labour front on tackling youth crime, and then finally with the anti-terror raids in the north-west.

It's the latter that's most intriguing because of the way already in which the "plot", if indeed there was one, is starting to be downplayed. Yesterday the Sun was headlining its website with "BOMB PLOT TO KILL THOUSANDS", as it is wont to do, while now spooks' friend Frank Gardner is briefing that it had been at "the aspirational, rather than operational" stage. This is quite a change from yesterday: then sources had been claiming, to the Guardian in particular that the attack was expected to have taken place by Monday at the latest, and that the raids, triggered by Bob Quick's slowness had successfully disrupted a soon to come to fruition plot. Others talked, even this morning, of suicide attacks on up to four locations, with the Daily Star yesterday going out on its usual limb (or as usual simply making it up) claiming that Anfield and Old Trafford were potential targets.

Equally, other stories claimed that those involved had been under surveillance for months; now the Guardian suggests that the intelligence alerting the authorities to the alleged plot had only arrived in the past couple of weeks, with the raids triggered because further intelligence had suggested that the attack was imminent. The only "incriminating" thing that appears to have been found so far is photographs of the Trafford centre, the Birdcage nightclub, St Ann's square and the Arndale centre, along with claims that officers watched and listened in as they took them.

It's enough to make you wonder whether already the police and security services are preparing for another "ricin plot"/Forest Gate style fiasco. This is the obvious problem when relying almost solely on intelligence rather than good old fashioned surveillance and police work; it tends, more than often, to be inaccurate. If the Guardian's take on the intelligence only coming in in the last two weeks is correct, it explains why both ministers and indeed the head of MI5 were up until very recently beginning to suggest that the general level of threat from terrorism had begun to diminish. If we assume for a moment that those arrested are at some level connected with jihadism, even if any attack they were planning was still way off, it does also suggest a step change in tactics. Until recently almost all those involved in past plots were either British citizens or had lived here for significant periods of time; only one of those arrested this time round is of British origin. Whether this is because those indigenous to this country had miserably failed, whether they be those involved in the fertiliser plot, the "liquid bomb" attacks or the Tiger Tiger/Glasgow airport patio gas canister debacle or because those at the top thought Pakistani student "clean skins" would have a better chance of going undetected, as well as being probably far better trained is unclear, but it does also suggest that the threat from actual Brits is declining, as suggested by Jonathan Evans when he said al-Qaida had no "semi-autonomous" structure in the country at present.

It could of course yet turn out to be everything which security sources initially briefed on, but as always it's equally difficult to know just how cynical to be, with Craig Murray getting his in early, especially regarding the coincidences regarding the Ian Tomlinson evidence and the continuing furore over parliamentary expenses. Always worth keeping in mind is that however much ministers and police attempt to exaggerate the threat, or what might have happened had a plot not been foiled, so far jihadists in this country have exposed their incompetence and ignorance on numerous occasions, while only succeeding once. The IRA used to say that they only had to be lucky once, which is true, but the odds are overwhelmingly, nonetheless, in our favour.

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4/09/2009 05:27:00 pm | |

Tuesday, April 07, 2009 

Argh.

Updates are likely to be light to non-existent until at least Wednesday evening, as I appear to be one of those lucky souls stricken by the major cable damage in East London, even though I'm a good 50 or more miles away and my phone line didn't go dead until late Sunday night. I'm sure you'll be able to amuse yourselves more than adequately in the mean time, although whether I will is another matter.

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4/07/2009 04:20:00 pm | |

Wednesday, March 04, 2009 

Half-assed blogging.

Apologies again for the half-assed blogging so far this week. I'd like to say it's because I've got something major in the works, but I haven't, it's just me not managing my time properly. Here then are two outstanding posts which more than merit your attention:

Stumbling and Mumbling - Gordon Brown: a defence
Unity - Woolas: the Minister for Invertebrates

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3/04/2009 11:59:00 pm | |

Monday, April 21, 2008 

Hiatus.

Being dragged away for a few days. Should be back on Friday.

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4/21/2008 12:52:00 am | |

Thursday, April 10, 2008 

MurdochSpace.

In one of my irregular moments of madness some time ago, as any of you whom for some reason have searched for "septicisle" might know (41 people have so far this month, although 11 have also been referred here after they searched for "gay orgy", 2 were from "celebs with big foreheads", another 2 from "putting in a tampon", yet another 2 for "dont hit kids no seriously they have guns now", 1 from "gordon brown's student pamphlet 'how to sponge a living from state benefits'", 1 more from "my grief is killing me help me" and finally 1 from "cunts at jobcentre made me get a job at a care home which is unbearable") I made the stupid mistake of setting up a MurdochSpace page. For anyone wondering, yes, it's mine, and yes, you couldn't possibly have guessed that I looked like that, and yes, I realise this makes me the most horrendous hypocrite. Still, at least I'm not on Facebook.

If any of you are so inclined or dull enough to want me as a phony friend, feel free.

I get the feeling I'm going to regret this in the morning.

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4/10/2008 04:03:00 am | |

Thursday, March 13, 2008 

Comment policy.

Seeing as I seem to be getting a few more comments lately (thank you to everyone who takes the time to incidentally, it's wonderful encouragement whether you agree with me or not) it's probably time for something approaching a policy on what is permissible and what isn't, although I'm hardly going to be strictly enforcing it.

1. Let's try and keep it as civil as possible - the exception being when someone so clearly deserves everything they get in return, i.e. Allison Pearson definitely yesterday, Kamm somewhat the day before. I'll always post a comment myself with the reason for why a comment has been removed, hopefully something I won't have to do.

2. Keep private/personal lives out of it as much as possible - unless rampant hypocrisy is in evidence. i.e. sorry to pick on you John, but what has happened on other blogs when he's commented and others have then sought fit to remind everyone of what he's served his time for is an example of something that's not going to fly here.

3. Anything I deem potentially libellous or wildly offensive that doesn't fall under the caveats in 1 is likely to be removed. Racism, misogyny, homophobia etc.

That should do it. If anyone has any suggestions, problems, then err, feel free to comment.

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3/13/2008 08:11:00 pm | |

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