A cyclist has been fined for causing the death of a girl. Initially, the 'story' was that he was riding on the pavement, It seems this was not true, or that the editors chose to exercise some poetic licence in their presentation of the facts. The account believed by the court was that the pedestrian was in the road. This doesn't make the fine one tenth enough, but neither does it make it any bigger than a car driver just as carelessly yesterday, and we will never hear about it. Worse, the pedestrian might have been blamed.
The law is clear, it says that the cyclist must be able to stop to avoid any visible obstacle. Failure to do so implies responsibility. This obviously also applies to every motorist who kills a pedestrian who steps suddenly off the pavement into the road. The motorist can see the pedestrian, and the possibility that they would step into the road is always there. So they were going too fast and weren't prepared. Therefore they are guilty.
Although in this case the cyclist claimed he was able to stop, in general, if the cyclist is near enough for his voice to be heard, and going fast enough to knock a person down, he will probably not able to brake without a collision. When braking hard in that kind of situation, it is likely that the bike will go out of control, and attempting to slip through a gap can often seem to the cyclist to be the safer option.
So what if the roles were reversed? If the girl had knocked the cyclist off his bike when she stepped into the road without looking, and killed him. Should she go to prison?
Given that the driver of a car which kills a pedestrian who steps into its path probably wouldn't go to prison, then she probably shouldn't for causing the death of a cyclist - under the current scale of values. Cyclists should be aware that pedestrians are always likely to 'trespass' on the road, either accidentally or not. Naturally, drivers need to be ten times more aware of this.
Similarly, I saw a little old lady bounced off the pavement into the road by a careless jogger only a month ago. She was shaken, but not damaged, and the jogger was desperately sorry, but it could have been very different.
So should pedestrians therefore be taxed, licensed and have registration plates, as some idiots are now demanding for cyclists? Taxing bikes would certainly make a lot of people abandon cycling, which is the point, after all.
Every cyclist has faced the situation when there isn't quite time enough to make the right decision. When the brain simply freezes in panic. Likewise, if you put yourself in the position of this poor girl, you could say that she should have jumped. In theory, she had the time, but she didn't.
In Theory, it is everyone's responsibility to look out for their own safety. So if we were all to share the same space, rather than fight across vaguely defined boundaries for scraps of disputed territory, everyone would keep themselves safe, and few would die, as traffic-sharing systems tested in Europe have shown. Territoriality and competitiveness cause as much danger on the road as anything else. And the this fierce competition is caused, as always, by overcrowding. An overcrowding which callously writes off thousands of lives every year as another of the acceptable overhead expenses of keeping the wheels of commerce turning.
In some parts of the world, legal minds would be twitching in anticipation of class actions on a grand scale. After all, what's the difference between the acceptable collateral deaths of road transport, and those of the tobacco industry? Both are caused by activities which are a matter of 'choice'. And in the U.S. the tobacco barons famously lost.
7/10/2008
7/09/2008
Boycott Redruth Youth Curfew
As if on cue, the corpses of Redruth now decide to put their lifelessness and spite on display by demanding that all young people be locked up indoors after 9pm in the summer holidays. Apparently, the sight of young, lively activity, and the sound of young voices is frightening to the cadavers who run the town.
Naturally, it will take more police to enforce this nasty, dirty, pettyminded little directive than it would take to keep the streets safe from the tiny minority of troublemakers - of all ages.
In the last 30 years, youth budgets across the country, at local and national level, have been slashed. In that same period, the demonisation of young people has reached hysterical levels.
The young people of Redruth should know that they can't arrest you all, and their parents should know that they can't take you all to court. But even more significantly, that if your children are made to feel like a problem by society simply because of their age they are going to be a problem, and if they are treated as criminals, they are more likely to commit crimes. And nobody wants that.
If the good old boys of Redruth are genuinely concerned, they had better start working to recreate some kind of community where they live. Otherwise, they are going to continue to live in misery and fear. Because there will always be young people, and they will always be a nuisance for as long as their basic, developmental needs are stifled.
I know it seems like a tall order, but Redruth is not going to solve its perceived problems by criminalising every teenager because of their age. That is a sure recipe for disaster. Only a functioning community, which young people feel part of and which is an integral part of their conscience, can help. The concerned residents should be lobbying for resources, and for the refurbishment of any resources they do have left after the ravages of the Right To Buy, and the car industry.
Treating youth as either a mental illness or a manifestation of the Devil is not going to help either, and neither is blaming the parents in an age when many parents have less control over what their kids think than the music industry and the producers of Hollyoaks.
If they want the streets to run on time why not go all the way and have a total midnight curfew. Nobody allowed out after 12 without 'papers'. That should put a stop to people enjoying themselves and make the paranoid feel a bit safer. Everyone's a winner - except for everyone still alive, of course.
What is the cause of British paedophobia? Partly it is displaced bigotry, as with every passing persecution fad. With every other minority group legally safe from persecution, only the young are available to be safely picked on. And they have very little legal, economic or social status, so they deserve all they get.
'We came for the Blacks, and got a good kicking.So we went for Women, and they humiliated us into submission.So we went Queer-bashing, and even that was made illegal.'
After making fun of the Welsh got boring, we realised that there was no season on young people, rebranded them 'Hoodies', and the rest is history.
Naturally, it will take more police to enforce this nasty, dirty, pettyminded little directive than it would take to keep the streets safe from the tiny minority of troublemakers - of all ages.
In the last 30 years, youth budgets across the country, at local and national level, have been slashed. In that same period, the demonisation of young people has reached hysterical levels.
The young people of Redruth should know that they can't arrest you all, and their parents should know that they can't take you all to court. But even more significantly, that if your children are made to feel like a problem by society simply because of their age they are going to be a problem, and if they are treated as criminals, they are more likely to commit crimes. And nobody wants that.
If the good old boys of Redruth are genuinely concerned, they had better start working to recreate some kind of community where they live. Otherwise, they are going to continue to live in misery and fear. Because there will always be young people, and they will always be a nuisance for as long as their basic, developmental needs are stifled.
I know it seems like a tall order, but Redruth is not going to solve its perceived problems by criminalising every teenager because of their age. That is a sure recipe for disaster. Only a functioning community, which young people feel part of and which is an integral part of their conscience, can help. The concerned residents should be lobbying for resources, and for the refurbishment of any resources they do have left after the ravages of the Right To Buy, and the car industry.
Treating youth as either a mental illness or a manifestation of the Devil is not going to help either, and neither is blaming the parents in an age when many parents have less control over what their kids think than the music industry and the producers of Hollyoaks.
If they want the streets to run on time why not go all the way and have a total midnight curfew. Nobody allowed out after 12 without 'papers'. That should put a stop to people enjoying themselves and make the paranoid feel a bit safer. Everyone's a winner - except for everyone still alive, of course.
What is the cause of British paedophobia? Partly it is displaced bigotry, as with every passing persecution fad. With every other minority group legally safe from persecution, only the young are available to be safely picked on. And they have very little legal, economic or social status, so they deserve all they get.
'We came for the Blacks, and got a good kicking.So we went for Women, and they humiliated us into submission.So we went Queer-bashing, and even that was made illegal.'
After making fun of the Welsh got boring, we realised that there was no season on young people, rebranded them 'Hoodies', and the rest is history.
7/06/2008
Nye Bevan Awake! Britain Needs You in Her Hour!
It is a shame that the grimy doings of Ray Lewis and Boris Johnson's cavalier sense of society have managed to partly overshadow the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service.
It is even more shameful that it has distracted from the fact that Britain is a chronically Paedophobic state, which only sees young people as a menace to be defeated as ruthlessly as possible.
The inevitable tactic of the right, when cornered as they are today, is to demand "Well, what would YOU do?"After all, they don't know. The hope being that there is no hope. The implication being that, in this case, the only way to teach children respect is to make them afraid, as embodied in the teachings of The Lewis Cult. The confusion between Respect and Fear is common among petty dictators and tories of every stripe. And naturally, the only remedy within their scope is fear. Teach other people to be afraid of you and they will do what you want them to - whatever that might be.
Nowhere, in the squalid lexicon of right wing so-called 'thought' is the notion that the main beneficiary of sociable behaviour is the person behaving sociably. That Virtue is It's Own Reward. Everywhere, the message is that 'Values must be instilled' in some forceful, no-nonsense manner, by repetitive physical violence if necessary. Tough Love. Lots of shouting and bullying - as in The Lewis Cult. Teach kids that the way to succeed is to be fearsome, and that will stop them carrying knives. It is perhaps Johnson's greatest betrayal of London that he fails to see the absurdity of that infantile proposition.
I realise the reactionary right haven’t got a clue about all this. It is unfair to expect them to. By definition, their primitive anti-social ideology is incapable of understanding how society works, and so cannot be expected to come up with any ideas for making it better – not that they want to, of course. Their objective has never been a better society but a more profitable one for the few greedy, ruthless, selfish, unscrupulous people willing to exploit the disadvantages of others. As this week’s shameful revelations have shown – and co-incedentally, as was also revealed by the story recounted this week of the struggle to establish proper health care in Britain against the concerted and rabid opposition of the tories and their cronies.
So to create a better society, sympathetic to the needs of children and their parents, the forces which are destroying the communities which used to mitigate anti-social behaviour have to be faced down.
In the last 60 years, most of Victorian Britain has been finally buried. By 1970 most houses in the country had plumbing, electricity and access to a free painless dentist. The NHS was thought to be one of the last nails in the coffin, as it was. But there is still one task left for any politician seeking to fully provide for Britain that which a ramshackle Victorian Free Market system cannot. Namely, a National Youth Service, to replace the current ragbag of charities, voluntary organisations, local government initiatives, Coca Cola marketing opportunities, religious madrassars of all faiths, and straightforward loony sect leaders and charlatans like Ray Lewis - all failing miserably to deliver any significant results in the battle against the sickness inflicting the young generation - the rulers of the future.
A casual glance will show that the current youth provision landscape as chaotic and devastated as the post-Somme post-Great Depression medical provision which confronted Bevan and Beveridge. It is the job which the Attlee government might have got around to in a second term had it realised that when the bombsites and other free play spaces had been redeveloped, and Britain grown prosperous and frantic once more, that the needs of children would tend to be forgotten, as they have been, with the result that they are now killing each other in London at the rate of about one a week.
Tackling this will provoke just as much opposition and hatred as did Nye's Bevan's Act of Parliament to save the health of the nation from the profiteering quacks and self-appointed quartermasters of national pain and relief, the tory BMA. Any act of parliament will face blatant anti-democratic sabotage, as committed by the medical profession in 1948. So it will take a very large politician to lead such an initiative. And that is the problem.
"Where oh where is he? Where can that man be?"He or she will have to face even more vitriol and lies than did Bevan, if that is possible, given the expansion of the mass media since that time. But whoever it is, they can take hope from events in the most unexpected of places, the deep south of the USA, from the chilliest corners of which Ray Lewis sought inspiration for his doctrine of Marching to Strength, but also where Barack O'bama is now using the power of personal publishing to win in states where jews are traditionally too black.
Kids now have a voice of their own. Some of them, a representative section, are able to voice their concerns and articulate their needs. When confronted with the "harsh voices " raised against improving public health, Nye Bevan only had the "silent voices of the poor" to comfort him. This time, the voices would not be quite so silent - if there are any politicians with Nye Bevan's guts.
Ray Lewis's passport to the unquestioning adulation of the tory party was, as far as anyone can discover, that he was:
a) not afraid to deliver the good old 'Clip Round The Ear' to any child who displeased him, and anyone who does that is fine by your average tory.
And
b) That he had something called 'charisma'. The ability to influence others.
Much nearer the truth is the theory that he was merely a weirdo cult leader who seemed to have had a pathological need to shout and scream at children. Whatever he was really, David Cameron loved him for it. Both seem to be nothing but sad reactionaries who can't tell Respect from Intimidation.
Nye Bevan had charisma and could make things happen. He was a dreamer and a builder. Ray Lewis is just a drab little glory-seeking power-worshipper of the most orthodox kind, as are his tory admirers. If only they were to realise that the NHS started life, not in the learned mind of Beveridge, or the political ambitions of Nye Bevan, but anonymously, on some cold wet Wednesday night in Tredegar in the 1890's, when a resolution would have been passed to establish the Tredegar Worker's Medical Aid Society. There will be minutes somewhere detailing who originally realised that a co-operative effort would provide far more peace, health, relief and happiness than the survival of the economically fittest, as was the delusion at that time. But there is no statue to him or her outside Bart's or King's or across the Thames from Parliament at St Thomas hospital. As is often the case, the nameless and silent are often responsible for far more good than the noisy and famous.
There are a smattering of organisations now which understand the genuine needs of young minds and bodies, and which are fighting a losing battle against the rod-wielding gutter press, determined as ever that pain should always be available as a means of controlling youth. But they can never hope to succeed while they rely on random patronage, and for as long as their methods and ideas remain unmonitored and largely untested.
But in general, the field of 'play provision' is a branch of the construction industry. A cash-cow for a grant-chasing cabal of second rate landscape gardeners with a portfolio of second year BA designs to palm off on gullible councillors and residents' associations over-stuffed with leaseholders - whose only concern is that it doesn't cost them any money, and it takes the sound of children away from their windows. For some reason, children's voices do not add to the value of an ex-Right To Buy property. Shabby little spiv outfits with names like 'Spacewurx' and 'GroundSpace' are all too ready to cover land with great play potential with their bland, dead flatpack solutions. They should be the first to be taken out and shot.
Bernard Crick, the prominent biographer of George Orwell claimed in one of the centenary TV documentaries that Orwell said he would have given up all his literary achievements to have been Prime Minister Nye Bevan's speechwriter in a socialist government. I would dearly love to know the source of that claim. It says everything about two of the greatest Britons ever, both of whom would readily accept that the real work of civilisation is done by the little nameless people of history. Like the people who created the Tredegar Workers Medical Aid Society, even though it was only a matter of self-defence, rather than any great money-making scheme. Perhaps somewhere there is an organisation now at work with young people, and a humanitarian strong enough to champion its vision, which could together do for Britain's neglected and alienated young people what T.W.M.A.S. and Nye Bevan did for the nation's health.
See Also: 'Kiddispoons'
It is even more shameful that it has distracted from the fact that Britain is a chronically Paedophobic state, which only sees young people as a menace to be defeated as ruthlessly as possible.
The inevitable tactic of the right, when cornered as they are today, is to demand "Well, what would YOU do?"After all, they don't know. The hope being that there is no hope. The implication being that, in this case, the only way to teach children respect is to make them afraid, as embodied in the teachings of The Lewis Cult. The confusion between Respect and Fear is common among petty dictators and tories of every stripe. And naturally, the only remedy within their scope is fear. Teach other people to be afraid of you and they will do what you want them to - whatever that might be.
Nowhere, in the squalid lexicon of right wing so-called 'thought' is the notion that the main beneficiary of sociable behaviour is the person behaving sociably. That Virtue is It's Own Reward. Everywhere, the message is that 'Values must be instilled' in some forceful, no-nonsense manner, by repetitive physical violence if necessary. Tough Love. Lots of shouting and bullying - as in The Lewis Cult. Teach kids that the way to succeed is to be fearsome, and that will stop them carrying knives. It is perhaps Johnson's greatest betrayal of London that he fails to see the absurdity of that infantile proposition.
I realise the reactionary right haven’t got a clue about all this. It is unfair to expect them to. By definition, their primitive anti-social ideology is incapable of understanding how society works, and so cannot be expected to come up with any ideas for making it better – not that they want to, of course. Their objective has never been a better society but a more profitable one for the few greedy, ruthless, selfish, unscrupulous people willing to exploit the disadvantages of others. As this week’s shameful revelations have shown – and co-incedentally, as was also revealed by the story recounted this week of the struggle to establish proper health care in Britain against the concerted and rabid opposition of the tories and their cronies.
So to create a better society, sympathetic to the needs of children and their parents, the forces which are destroying the communities which used to mitigate anti-social behaviour have to be faced down.
- Control the property market.
- Bring the car industry to heel.
- Make the owners of the hate-mongering gutter press pay some tax.
- Provide proper places where young people can meet and learn how to engage with one another and people of different ages.
- Restore community centres to communities, and communities to the people who live in them.
In the last 60 years, most of Victorian Britain has been finally buried. By 1970 most houses in the country had plumbing, electricity and access to a free painless dentist. The NHS was thought to be one of the last nails in the coffin, as it was. But there is still one task left for any politician seeking to fully provide for Britain that which a ramshackle Victorian Free Market system cannot. Namely, a National Youth Service, to replace the current ragbag of charities, voluntary organisations, local government initiatives, Coca Cola marketing opportunities, religious madrassars of all faiths, and straightforward loony sect leaders and charlatans like Ray Lewis - all failing miserably to deliver any significant results in the battle against the sickness inflicting the young generation - the rulers of the future.
A casual glance will show that the current youth provision landscape as chaotic and devastated as the post-Somme post-Great Depression medical provision which confronted Bevan and Beveridge. It is the job which the Attlee government might have got around to in a second term had it realised that when the bombsites and other free play spaces had been redeveloped, and Britain grown prosperous and frantic once more, that the needs of children would tend to be forgotten, as they have been, with the result that they are now killing each other in London at the rate of about one a week.
Tackling this will provoke just as much opposition and hatred as did Nye's Bevan's Act of Parliament to save the health of the nation from the profiteering quacks and self-appointed quartermasters of national pain and relief, the tory BMA. Any act of parliament will face blatant anti-democratic sabotage, as committed by the medical profession in 1948. So it will take a very large politician to lead such an initiative. And that is the problem.
"Where oh where is he? Where can that man be?"He or she will have to face even more vitriol and lies than did Bevan, if that is possible, given the expansion of the mass media since that time. But whoever it is, they can take hope from events in the most unexpected of places, the deep south of the USA, from the chilliest corners of which Ray Lewis sought inspiration for his doctrine of Marching to Strength, but also where Barack O'bama is now using the power of personal publishing to win in states where jews are traditionally too black.
Kids now have a voice of their own. Some of them, a representative section, are able to voice their concerns and articulate their needs. When confronted with the "harsh voices " raised against improving public health, Nye Bevan only had the "silent voices of the poor" to comfort him. This time, the voices would not be quite so silent - if there are any politicians with Nye Bevan's guts.
Ray Lewis's passport to the unquestioning adulation of the tory party was, as far as anyone can discover, that he was:
a) not afraid to deliver the good old 'Clip Round The Ear' to any child who displeased him, and anyone who does that is fine by your average tory.
And
b) That he had something called 'charisma'. The ability to influence others.
Much nearer the truth is the theory that he was merely a weirdo cult leader who seemed to have had a pathological need to shout and scream at children. Whatever he was really, David Cameron loved him for it. Both seem to be nothing but sad reactionaries who can't tell Respect from Intimidation.
Nye Bevan had charisma and could make things happen. He was a dreamer and a builder. Ray Lewis is just a drab little glory-seeking power-worshipper of the most orthodox kind, as are his tory admirers. If only they were to realise that the NHS started life, not in the learned mind of Beveridge, or the political ambitions of Nye Bevan, but anonymously, on some cold wet Wednesday night in Tredegar in the 1890's, when a resolution would have been passed to establish the Tredegar Worker's Medical Aid Society. There will be minutes somewhere detailing who originally realised that a co-operative effort would provide far more peace, health, relief and happiness than the survival of the economically fittest, as was the delusion at that time. But there is no statue to him or her outside Bart's or King's or across the Thames from Parliament at St Thomas hospital. As is often the case, the nameless and silent are often responsible for far more good than the noisy and famous.
There are a smattering of organisations now which understand the genuine needs of young minds and bodies, and which are fighting a losing battle against the rod-wielding gutter press, determined as ever that pain should always be available as a means of controlling youth. But they can never hope to succeed while they rely on random patronage, and for as long as their methods and ideas remain unmonitored and largely untested.
But in general, the field of 'play provision' is a branch of the construction industry. A cash-cow for a grant-chasing cabal of second rate landscape gardeners with a portfolio of second year BA designs to palm off on gullible councillors and residents' associations over-stuffed with leaseholders - whose only concern is that it doesn't cost them any money, and it takes the sound of children away from their windows. For some reason, children's voices do not add to the value of an ex-Right To Buy property. Shabby little spiv outfits with names like 'Spacewurx' and 'GroundSpace' are all too ready to cover land with great play potential with their bland, dead flatpack solutions. They should be the first to be taken out and shot.
Bernard Crick, the prominent biographer of George Orwell claimed in one of the centenary TV documentaries that Orwell said he would have given up all his literary achievements to have been Prime Minister Nye Bevan's speechwriter in a socialist government. I would dearly love to know the source of that claim. It says everything about two of the greatest Britons ever, both of whom would readily accept that the real work of civilisation is done by the little nameless people of history. Like the people who created the Tredegar Workers Medical Aid Society, even though it was only a matter of self-defence, rather than any great money-making scheme. Perhaps somewhere there is an organisation now at work with young people, and a humanitarian strong enough to champion its vision, which could together do for Britain's neglected and alienated young people what T.W.M.A.S. and Nye Bevan did for the nation's health.
See Also: 'Kiddispoons'
The Money Was Just Resting In My Account, Boris
I quote at random from tomorrow's Mail on Sunday about Ray lewis, Youth Guru and blue-eyed-boy of Boris Johnson.
He was yesterday facing claims that during a posting to the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1997 he organised a charity raffle but failed to give the first prize - a car - to the winner. One of his parishioners there came forward, saying the holder of the winning ticket never received the prize.
I only hope that the writers of 'Father Ted' ('Think Fast Father Ted' Series 2 8 March 1996 – 10 May 1996) will not be held responsible in any way for the alleged villainies of Ray Lewis, charismatic hero of brand new London Mayor, Boris Johnson and Tory leader, David Cameron, both of whom saw no reason to explore the past of a man with such lantern-jawed get-up-and-go and other public school business cliches.
"Realising that they can't give the borrowed car away, Ted and Dougal rig the raffle in order for them to win and return the car. The plan involves Ted, as the emcee, calling the number 11. This number will be Dougal's. On the day of the event, Ted and Dougal work feverishly ..."" etc etc
with hilarious consequences. You get the general idea. If there's a better Father Ted imitation doing the rounds, I'd like to hear about it
Dr Reginald Buckmaire, a longstanding member of the island's parish council, said the car was going to be bought with the money raised in the raffle.'We got some and I don't know what happened to the rest,' he added. 'You draw your own conclusions. I feel bad.' Mail on Sunday
The trouble is that from inside London, as the list of squalor grows, it doesn't look quite so funny. Still, Boris looked happy enough in his pink hat at yesterday's Gay Pride, looking festive. And after all, that's what he's best at. What his boss, David Cameron is any good at, only time will tell. In fact, as Father Jack would say. "That would be an ecumenical matter...."
The glorious Father Ted was, of course, tragically cut to a mere three series by the death of Dermot Morgan. Londoners won't be worried about the Old Etonian Twerperies of Bojo & The Chaps ending as suddenly - but without any deaths, naturally.
"Feck!"
- as Boris Johnson would have been saying quite a lot lately, and not for the last time. Expect the similarity to the well-meaning but hapless and bungling Father Ted to fade and the resemblance to the deranged Father Jack to grow as does the pressure of responsibility on this pickled teenager. Or better, as Nye Bevan would have called him, this "petrified adolescent."
The truth is that Lewis is a bullying weirdo and his cult should be the object of deep suspicion. Like many adults beaten as a child, he believes that Respect and Fear are the same thing, never having learned any different.
He now wants to drill that debased morality into some of the most vulnerable kids in London. To teach them that violence gets results. And by doing so, intends to make them stop being violent. The man is clearly deranged.
He was yesterday facing claims that during a posting to the Caribbean island of Grenada in 1997 he organised a charity raffle but failed to give the first prize - a car - to the winner. One of his parishioners there came forward, saying the holder of the winning ticket never received the prize.
I only hope that the writers of 'Father Ted' ('Think Fast Father Ted' Series 2 8 March 1996 – 10 May 1996) will not be held responsible in any way for the alleged villainies of Ray Lewis, charismatic hero of brand new London Mayor, Boris Johnson and Tory leader, David Cameron, both of whom saw no reason to explore the past of a man with such lantern-jawed get-up-and-go and other public school business cliches.
"Realising that they can't give the borrowed car away, Ted and Dougal rig the raffle in order for them to win and return the car. The plan involves Ted, as the emcee, calling the number 11. This number will be Dougal's. On the day of the event, Ted and Dougal work feverishly ..."" etc etc
with hilarious consequences. You get the general idea. If there's a better Father Ted imitation doing the rounds, I'd like to hear about it
Dr Reginald Buckmaire, a longstanding member of the island's parish council, said the car was going to be bought with the money raised in the raffle.'We got some and I don't know what happened to the rest,' he added. 'You draw your own conclusions. I feel bad.' Mail on Sunday
The trouble is that from inside London, as the list of squalor grows, it doesn't look quite so funny. Still, Boris looked happy enough in his pink hat at yesterday's Gay Pride, looking festive. And after all, that's what he's best at. What his boss, David Cameron is any good at, only time will tell. In fact, as Father Jack would say. "That would be an ecumenical matter...."
The glorious Father Ted was, of course, tragically cut to a mere three series by the death of Dermot Morgan. Londoners won't be worried about the Old Etonian Twerperies of Bojo & The Chaps ending as suddenly - but without any deaths, naturally.
"Feck!"
- as Boris Johnson would have been saying quite a lot lately, and not for the last time. Expect the similarity to the well-meaning but hapless and bungling Father Ted to fade and the resemblance to the deranged Father Jack to grow as does the pressure of responsibility on this pickled teenager. Or better, as Nye Bevan would have called him, this "petrified adolescent."
The truth is that Lewis is a bullying weirdo and his cult should be the object of deep suspicion. Like many adults beaten as a child, he believes that Respect and Fear are the same thing, never having learned any different.
He now wants to drill that debased morality into some of the most vulnerable kids in London. To teach them that violence gets results. And by doing so, intends to make them stop being violent. The man is clearly deranged.
7/03/2008
Marie Winehouse - One of The Ruins That Cromwell Knocked Abaht A Bit..
Synchronising medialets.
Amy Winehouse staggering through her set at Glastonbury on saturday night followed by the TV biopic of Marie Lloyd doing her drunken syphilitic swansong.
Amy Winehouse staggering through her set at Glastonbury on saturday night followed by the TV biopic of Marie Lloyd doing her drunken syphilitic swansong.
"In the gay old days there used to be something doing
No wonder that the poor old abbey went to ruin.
Those who raise their voices sing and shout of it,
You can bet your life there isn't any doubt of it.
Outside the Oliver Cromwell last Saturday night
I was one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit."Marie Lloyd was 52, Amy Winehouse is 24.
7/02/2008
The Tory Breath Of Fresh Air......
DAY 65. July 4th 2008
Sunny Ray Lewis Takes The Bullet.
Ray resigns in confusion, blaming the media, who are spoilt brats who cannot 'defer gratification', apparently. Tell it to the Daily Mail, Ray, they say on today's front page that the wheel has already come off the Bojo cart, and they got him elected almost as much as the Evening Standard, so they should know all Boris's failings by heart, having concealed them throughout the period when they might have been of some democratic use to London's electorate.
Co-incedentally, Channel 4 says that the Bishop of Barking told Raymond that he was on the Lambeth List less than 12 months ago. As Raymond was denying all knowledge of this fact last night on BBC, that makes him (or his Grace the Bishop of Barking) a big fat liar, whatever comes of the dozens of other allegations about his financial and sexual principles, and his alleged tendency to beat up the kids in his care. Whether he is any good at deferring gratification only the expensive enquiry into Boris's first 64 days in office will tell.
The antics of minor buffoon Ray Lewis should not be allowed to overshadow those of his maestro. As widely predicted months ago, Boris is looking like a harrassed horsehair sofa at his first test. Some predicated this fatal discombobulation would come sooner, some later, but everyone with an ounce of sense saw that this was not a natural statesman or administrator - who was sure to bungle it sooner or later on a momumentally farcical scale, and then just as likely to adopt the Billy Bunter defence as any other.
"I never stole your rotten cake - it didn't have many plums in it anyway!"
I think it's cruel to watch a dumb animal suffer like this. Will David Cameron not put him out of his misery? But then, who will put Cameron out of his? After all, he was one of The Few who did not have the required ounce of sense. So who else has been given the Dai Cameron seal of approval - that we don't know about yet?
Only time will tell.
Perhaps Cameron's biggest fan (on and off) Kelvin McKenzie, can now tell us whether this masterstroke of judgement means Cameron is 'an idiot' as McKenzie once called him, or some sort of genius. Do tell, Kelvin.
And then we have this 180 degree reversal from the Daily Mail. More lies from a multi-billion pound business. So new? The Mail is obviously in a moral and intellectual free-fall as hopeless as that of the Boris administration and the bankrupt reactionary tory ideology itself. As the most powerful tory in Britain, Gordon Brown should be watching these events and learning, not laughing.
DAY 64In a 180 degree U-Turn from his position of a few months ago, Boris Johnson now tells us not to Have A Go but to Run Away. But why doesn't he say what we SHOULD do to help a woman being attacked in an alley?
Mr Johnson, who lives a few streets from where16-year-old Ben Kinsella was attacked, revealed what one 'very nice ex-jailbird' had told him -
'If you see a fight in the street, don't risk it because someone might have a knife.' The mayor added: 'I'm afraid that may sound like a lack of public spirit if someone is being badly attacked. But if I was giving advice to my kids and there was a bar brawl in Islington, it would be to look after themselves.'Everybody is shocked by the level of violence we are seeing, particularly towards young people, and we must all work as hard as we can to reverse this dreadful trend.' says the Daily MailWhich is simply restating the potential dangers of helping others and can only have the effect of making people more afraid, and by doing so, hand over control of the streets to the real criminals. But that doesn't seem to bother the Mail, which doesn't offer any constructive suggestions either.
Boris's job as mayor is to raise the morale of Londoners and offer constructive suggestions to making London a better place. Making people more afrid than they need to be is not the way to do this, something which a genuine mayor would know instinctively. In the event of an emergency facing London, a genuine mayor would offer ways in which we could all help and feel that we were acting together to counter the threat.
Something like a certain speech by Ken Livingstone on July 7th 2005, which made every Londoner feel more of a Londoner - not more afraid of London, and even made many non-Londoners feel like Londoners.
Instead, all Johnson can do is tell people to run away, which may be interpreted as evidence of Bojo's Born Again Beatnik credentials, or maybe not. True, if we all ran away, there wouldn't be anyone to rescue or anyone to rescue them from. But a genuine beatnik would at least urge people to dial 999 as they ran...
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DAY 64 ctd.
And now it seems Boris has a scandal to deal with. Ray Lewis, his choice as deputy turns out to be a dodgy disciplinarian and skypilot who is almost as tongue-tied and musclebound from the neck up as his boss. He is not even in post and The Mayor has to call an emergency press conference to announce the enquiry to clear his deputy of serious financial and sexual allegations.
Briefly, it appears that for several years, after serious complaints were made to the church about him in the Caribbean, Sunny Ray has been on the so-called 'Lambeth List', which is an episcopal Directory of Vicars deemed too dodgy to be allowed a parish. . Ray denies any knowledge of any complaints, or of being on the list, claiming that he retired from the church in 1997. Coincedentally. Time will tell, both for him and the Johnson administration - if that isn't to abuse a noble word.
Now all we need to know from the compilers of the Lambeth List is whether they told Sunny that he was blackballed or not. Be rude not to. So is there an Evening Standard hack out there with the grey matter and pep to call someone at C.of E .HQ and ask:
"Did you tell Ray Lewis that you'd banned him from office?"
If they did tell him, he is a liar.
If the Standard doesn't ask, it is the liar - by concealing the truth. But we knew that all along.
At least Lee Jasper took two terms of office to give the Standard enough half-truths to set them on his tail. Surely he also deserves the privilege of an enquiry to clear his name of the smears published in the gutter press..
By the way, whatever did happen to the mountain of corruption Boris promised to reveal at the heart of the Livingstone administration? Same thing that happened to Saddam's WOMD presumably. After all, the gutter press of Gilligan and other broken-backed right wing hacks was printing a 'Dodgy Dossier' on Ken every day. Gilligan could even have cut and pasted previous famous efforts of his, knowing that in this case, his bosses would supply even less scrutiny than at the BBC. After all, there was an electorate to mislead, and a Fool to place in Office.
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DAY 63
Boris claims today to be "expeditiously expiditing the no-strike agreement as expeditiously as possible."
"Never heard of him", said head of the main union involved, Bob Crow, on Ken Livingstone's LBC radio phone-in a few minutes later. And he should know. According to Crow, Johnson has not talked him, or offered a meeting of any sort, and what's more, if he had done, Crow would have told him where to stick his no-strike agreement. So what is this 'expedition' Bojo claims to be embarked upon? In his pith helmet, possibly.
Boris is making London up as he goes along. God help us all. Still, three years of this will serve to take some of the glitter off the embryonic Cameron regime.
Mad Ground Zero Plans Under Threat
Port Authority executive Christopher Ward is warning that
"The schedule and cost estimates of the rebuilding effort that have been communicated to the public are not realistic."
In other words, a bit mad. Anyone with any sense and humanity knew all along that the proposed Freemarket Tower was the worst and stupidest replacement for the already hated Twin Towers - until they were destroyed and contrary to media assumptions, the Twin Towers were not New York's favourite buildings.
Given the circumstances of their destruction, the only sensible plan would have been to turn the entire site into a water park at the centre of a new junction between the Hudson and East Rivers, offering some sense of reconciliation and cleansing the money district in more ways than one.
Naturally, this will never happen, unless the mysterious dispossessed Welsh owner of lower Manhattan and the Edwards Billions is discovered and authenticated and says no. Which isn't going to happen either. So by 2013, or 16, or 18 we may have another monstrously expensive monument to the same forces and paranoia which destroyed the original stars of the 1976 remake of King Kong and Phillipe Petit's 'Man on Wire'.
"The schedule and cost estimates of the rebuilding effort that have been communicated to the public are not realistic."
In other words, a bit mad. Anyone with any sense and humanity knew all along that the proposed Freemarket Tower was the worst and stupidest replacement for the already hated Twin Towers - until they were destroyed and contrary to media assumptions, the Twin Towers were not New York's favourite buildings.
Given the circumstances of their destruction, the only sensible plan would have been to turn the entire site into a water park at the centre of a new junction between the Hudson and East Rivers, offering some sense of reconciliation and cleansing the money district in more ways than one.
Naturally, this will never happen, unless the mysterious dispossessed Welsh owner of lower Manhattan and the Edwards Billions is discovered and authenticated and says no. Which isn't going to happen either. So by 2013, or 16, or 18 we may have another monstrously expensive monument to the same forces and paranoia which destroyed the original stars of the 1976 remake of King Kong and Phillipe Petit's 'Man on Wire'.
7/01/2008
Tom Daley Vs Primark
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44300000/jpg/_44300583_thomas_daley2.jpg
How can this boy on the end of a diving board help being compared and contrasted with the millions of child labourers in India and other places, at the sweaty end of the Primark profit-chain? How can the sight of this child with the eyes of the world on him not remind us of the millions of lives which are destroyed each year so that we can cheer ourselves up cheaply with a new shirt or dress every week, so that consumerism can get its quick fix behind the bikesheds?
The answer to both questions must be because it must seem natural to us that these lives are destroyed. Otherwise, we would never shop again with confidence. Just as it seems natural and worthy that India is now a rich and powerful country, with a growing oligarchy of billionaires, and a market presence to be proud of.
It is also natural that with access to such token wage bills, Indian entrepreneurs should attract manufacturing jobs away from the west, causing unemployment, but at the same time, making unemployment more tolerable by reducing the cost of clothes in Primark. And naturally, unemployment is more tolerable in Britain than in India because we have a welfare state. So isn't it time India had one too? Now that she is an embryonic super power. In fact, isn't it time that the western business cabals started demanding that India bear its fair share of global poverty, and allow the jam of manufacturing employment to be spread a little thinner but a little wider. In other words, it is time that the CBI started lecturing India (and China) on social policies it would once have described as socialist.
This is assuming, of course, that the likes of the CBI do not relish the prospect of India sliding into a form of Neo-Feudalism, based essentially on slave labour - because if they are prepared to accept that political model in India, why should we assume they would be hostile to it in Britain? Especially as it seems to be so profitable. In fact, why should Digby Jones have any problems with the Chinese political model, given how stable and long-lasting it obviously is.
Whatever muffled outburts of defiance we get to see in the smoggy Beijing august, it's safe to predict that there won't be many demands for fair housing benefit and access to universal trade union rights from many western media machines. And yet without this economic safety net, a system based on a vote every 5 years is a pale imitation of democracy, and can still run on slavery, as India, the biggest democracy of all, shows.
Beijing Olympics 2008
How can this boy on the end of a diving board help being compared and contrasted with the millions of child labourers in India and other places, at the sweaty end of the Primark profit-chain? How can the sight of this child with the eyes of the world on him not remind us of the millions of lives which are destroyed each year so that we can cheer ourselves up cheaply with a new shirt or dress every week, so that consumerism can get its quick fix behind the bikesheds?
The answer to both questions must be because it must seem natural to us that these lives are destroyed. Otherwise, we would never shop again with confidence. Just as it seems natural and worthy that India is now a rich and powerful country, with a growing oligarchy of billionaires, and a market presence to be proud of.
It is also natural that with access to such token wage bills, Indian entrepreneurs should attract manufacturing jobs away from the west, causing unemployment, but at the same time, making unemployment more tolerable by reducing the cost of clothes in Primark. And naturally, unemployment is more tolerable in Britain than in India because we have a welfare state. So isn't it time India had one too? Now that she is an embryonic super power. In fact, isn't it time that the western business cabals started demanding that India bear its fair share of global poverty, and allow the jam of manufacturing employment to be spread a little thinner but a little wider. In other words, it is time that the CBI started lecturing India (and China) on social policies it would once have described as socialist.
This is assuming, of course, that the likes of the CBI do not relish the prospect of India sliding into a form of Neo-Feudalism, based essentially on slave labour - because if they are prepared to accept that political model in India, why should we assume they would be hostile to it in Britain? Especially as it seems to be so profitable. In fact, why should Digby Jones have any problems with the Chinese political model, given how stable and long-lasting it obviously is.
Whatever muffled outburts of defiance we get to see in the smoggy Beijing august, it's safe to predict that there won't be many demands for fair housing benefit and access to universal trade union rights from many western media machines. And yet without this economic safety net, a system based on a vote every 5 years is a pale imitation of democracy, and can still run on slavery, as India, the biggest democracy of all, shows.
Beijing Olympics 2008
Fiona Bruce Misses The Point
WARNING TO TIME-WASTERS - NO ADULT CONTENT BELOW.
If you think there are pictures of Ms Bruce here, you were misinformed. Blame Google.
Dear old Fiona Bruce.
She spends 40 years looking down on the world from her stillettoes, and eventually comes to the reasonable feminist conclusion that every woman will have been sexually molested by the time she reaches 50. And apart from the also reasonable suggestion that the offenders be made to bite off their own testarossas, her solution is that women should be forever vigilant against this ever-present threat. Which again sounds reasonable enough, if a decade or three too late. Her book, published today, seems to be crammed with sensible Girl-Guide notes on how to not be robbed, swindled, forgotten, attacked or killed. Don't forget your keys, girls! In other words, on how to be as sassy, sorry 'Savvy' as she obviously is.
One bi-product of co-writing this book has apparently been to raise her awareness of the extent of casual, mundane, everyday, Carry-On style sexual assault. The disgusting, traumatising sort of event which women are supposed to laugh off.
As most women know, this is a universal experience, and therefore as a co-incidental guest on today's 'Wright Stuff', Fiona was part of a bemused panel which found that almost every woman in the studio had been molested at least once, and she which was forced to ask over and over:
'Why do they do it? Why do men feel they have the right to molest women in the street'without anyone pointing out that women are perpetually offered for mental molestation on every street corner, almost always by depictions of women in the style of Fiona Bruce or Shobna Gulati.
There was even some loose talk about a campaign of sorts. Posters were mentioned, but only as a means of countering this menace, and not as part of the problem. Not one member of this highly savvy gathering of media folk were able to make the connection between the landscape of drooling, open-crotch posters, and videos of submissive women offering themselves for the price of a bar of chocolate, and the reasonable assumption on the part of the molestor that if women in general go along with the spirit of this transaction, then sex is a commodity which men are entitled to on demand. As the savvy young lady in the underwear promises:
'Christmas Kisses Guaranteed.'Any sort of campaign must take account of the fact that advertising does work, no matter what the advertising industry says, and that the image it regularly conveys of women is of being sexually available and vulnerable. Sexually desperate and vulnerable men will believe this applies to all women. But that would mean taking on the advertising industry and all the industries it pimps for. And what are the chances of that from people like Fiona Bruce and Matthew Wright, who have so much to lose?
The enemy of women is the money market which uses their bodies to empty shelves. Which creates the 48 sheet posters of them for mental molestation on every street corner.
The media classes seem totally unable to make the connection between their marketing of sex on demand, and the inevitable, resultant demand for sex. Which is not sex at all, but politics at its most basic level.
This of course is not the same as saying that all men will react that way - the gross Strawman argument of Dan Leslie and her mates at the Daily Wail, but some certainly will, and do. And some will take the next leap from groping on tube trains to serious sexual and physical assault. The reason why such 48-sheet porn should be taboo is therefore the same reason we regulate gun use.
In the meantime, the other effect of using sex to sell drain cleaner is to degrade women in general. To make them a bit less human. Which makes criminal assaults and abuse even more likely, but which also makes the law less likely to protect women in the first place, if laws define the acceptable norms of social behaviour.
So what we are seeing in Fiona's misgivings, and the findings of today's UN report on sexual harassment is a retreat from feminism and the triumph of the commercialisation of women. Too little feminism, not too much.
6/26/2008
Bojo the Batty - The Discombobulation of Boris
James McGrath is definitely not a racist, both David Cameron and Boris Johnson say so, and they are both honourable men, and so McGrath must be sacked as quickly as possible.
That's clear as mud then, like the Boris Johnson administration and its Cameron backers.
So either Cameron and Johnson don't know what racism is, in which case they are idiots who shouldn't be running a creche. Or they do know, and are therefore a pair of standard issue tory slimeballs only fit to run a second hand car showroom.
If his remarks were not racist, why did McGrath have to go? Apparently, because of 'bad timing', whatever that means. The battiness of the Bojo administration continues to fail to disappoint.
6/19/2008
Kiddispoons
The World Health Organisation follows UNICEF in finding that British kids are not the healthiest in the world. WHO reports that they get drunk earlier and suffer for it, UNICEF reports that they are some of the unhappiest children around.
They're unhappy, and they habitually get rat-arsed. Surprise surprise.
Of course, it's not like this on the continent, we're told. Drink there is a social grace. A sort of folk art or religion. A socially cohesive factor rather than British Jekyll'n'Hyde Juice. All the family, from olive-soaked great-grannies to bouncing bambinos, performing the healing ritual together in the laughing shade. And Britain does have a more intensively compartmentalised sense of time than hotter, more recently industrialised cultures. We didn't win two world wars with siestas. But the shiftwork we needed to win those wars, and the peactime battle for industrial market dominance, definitely left its 40 hour week mark on the culture, which remains one of the most regimented in Europe, in which flexi-time is still thought of as an impossibility, like a form of time voodoo. Thank God It's Friday is a characteristically British expression, expressed in the act of getting roaring drunk for the two days freedom called The Weekend.
The average British 15 year old, looking at the actions of his immediate superiors, must conclude that alcohol is for getting drunk. That is the point, to obliterate reality as much as possibility, possibly because, as UNICEF says, reality hurts. To expect parents to be able to counter the massive effects on the adolescent mind of advertising, peer-pressure, product-targeting, and the cultural status afforded to drunkenness is unrealistic and ultimately a cop-out. Civic responsibility must take over where parental responsibility has been repeatedly proven to be inadequate, and where 'commercial responsibility' fails to self-regulate - if it ever does.
Whatever else happens, the rediscovery of the Youth Centre must take place, if necessary, at the taxpayers expense.
In a perfect marketplace, a socially responsible, enterprising brewery chain would spot the vast gap in the market for warm dry venues where young people could meet and drink - and even be taught to drink. A tactfully supervised social environment where all the social instincts and networking destroyed in the last 30 years can be recharged by a new generation. A chain of these youth pubs might even be called Kiddispoons, who knows? The possible ways to counter British paedophobia are endless. Wetherspoons claims to be open to suggestions. Then how about it building a chain of modern youth venues - New Youth Clubs - to attempt to fill the social gap before kids can legally be sold alcohol. The objective being to heal some of the alienation of young people and teach them do socialise over drinks.
One terrible possibility is that lovely cuddly Europe will end up like us. That is their mistake to make. Meanwhile Scotland is proposing price fixing to deter excessive drinking. A 'Bevy Levy', in fact. As gross a distortion of natural market forces as was ever contemplated in the birthplace of Adam Smith, and surely immoral in some pulpits even now. The democratically elected Swedish government was taken to the European Court of Human Rights by the massed lawyers of teh advertising industry for merely protecting Swedish children from propaganda for poisonous sugar products. What can the lairds of Holyrood expect for getting on the wrong side of the booze barons?
Naturally, there is a convenient sidetrack. We can't measure or weigh happiness, so why even consider it. Be grateful when it happens and get on with your job, Cratchet. And then there is relative happiness across the generations, and the confusing effects of material prosperity on the equation. We were poor but we were happy? Really?
The truth which cannot be sidetracked is that we are living faster lives, and we sense it. And the effect of this frantic pace is to make us feel that our lives are shorter than our grandparents did. We are living in a greater sense of panic, that this is not a rehearsal, and that in addition, we are now indoctrinated that it is feckless and foolish to expect anyone to co-operate or help you unless they stand to gain substantially from the transaction. Scrooge's countinghouse without the benevolent glow.
When Tom Harris asks the question 'What IS Happiness?' he is sort of missing the point. As a Labour MP he should be told over and again, by Orwell for instance, that
" the real objective of Socialism is not happiness. Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood."
Then maybe his government would begin to sound like it was telling the truth.
6/03/2008
'Musicophilia'? - Bloody Amateurs..
'Musicophilia - Tales of Music And The Brain' - Oliver Sacks
Hopefully, one of the side-effects of this new book, with all the media attention it deserves, will be to flush out a long-lost titbit of information which has evaded the powers of the internet up until now, as far as I can see.
Some ten years ago, BBC's Newsnight, hosted by Jeremy Paxman, ran a report about the therapeutic uses of music, in particular, Mozart.
Two behavioural studies showed evidence that playing Mozart to over-active or inattentive children helped to calm them down and concentrate. One report explained this by analysing the frequencies preferred by Mozart and found that they matched a corresponding preference in the human brain. Roughly.
The second study involved boys with Tourette's Syndrome, or similar disorders. The director of this study concluded that it was not the frequencies of the music which was pacifying the subjects, but music itself. And the reason why Mozart should be particularly effective may have been because he was also subject to uncontrollable, anti-social outbursts, and that he used music as a pacifier for his inner eccentricities, or genius, as we call it. This attempt to direct this energy is still encoded in Mozart's compositions, and that when 'downloaded' or 'installed' into the listener, have the same effect which Mozart was trying to achieve for himself - peace.
The implications of this simple way of looking at music are, as Paxman said at the time, "Absolutely fascinating." The trouble is, no-one now seems to know what became of that research, or who conducted it.
And in the meantime, the power of music is being harnessed by the kind of people who always end up creating barbarisms, and is used as a torture machine. The exact opposite of what god intended. An obscene crime against humanity for which the guilty should fry in hell as long as any in diabolic history. This is probably a recent perversion, music is more usually famous for being able to relieve pain, which I can testify to from recent personal experience. Long story.
William Burroughs accounts how he once kicked heroin using marijuana and Louis Armstrong records. The assumption being that music can work as an analgesic. Like a chemical which matches the pharmokinesis of a headache. Or even that the music might not be merely blocking a neurological action, but that it might be conveying something more specific, as in the theory of Mozart and Tourettes sufferers. That music is a form of encryption as potentially powerful as computer code.
Experience has taught me that heroin-sodden jazz by Charlie Parker and John Coltrane has a predictable effect on my dentist's drill, and that it can ease the pain of a spinal tap during a recent hospital stay for Guillaime Barre syndrome. I was only allowed minimal doses of hospital morphine, so had to get it some other way, namely via the encoded form of those who encoded it in their music.
TBC
Tonite!
'Imagine' Oliver Sacks. BBC1.
Hopefully, one of the side-effects of this new book, with all the media attention it deserves, will be to flush out a long-lost titbit of information which has evaded the powers of the internet up until now, as far as I can see.
Some ten years ago, BBC's Newsnight, hosted by Jeremy Paxman, ran a report about the therapeutic uses of music, in particular, Mozart.
Two behavioural studies showed evidence that playing Mozart to over-active or inattentive children helped to calm them down and concentrate. One report explained this by analysing the frequencies preferred by Mozart and found that they matched a corresponding preference in the human brain. Roughly.
The second study involved boys with Tourette's Syndrome, or similar disorders. The director of this study concluded that it was not the frequencies of the music which was pacifying the subjects, but music itself. And the reason why Mozart should be particularly effective may have been because he was also subject to uncontrollable, anti-social outbursts, and that he used music as a pacifier for his inner eccentricities, or genius, as we call it. This attempt to direct this energy is still encoded in Mozart's compositions, and that when 'downloaded' or 'installed' into the listener, have the same effect which Mozart was trying to achieve for himself - peace.
The implications of this simple way of looking at music are, as Paxman said at the time, "Absolutely fascinating." The trouble is, no-one now seems to know what became of that research, or who conducted it.
And in the meantime, the power of music is being harnessed by the kind of people who always end up creating barbarisms, and is used as a torture machine. The exact opposite of what god intended. An obscene crime against humanity for which the guilty should fry in hell as long as any in diabolic history. This is probably a recent perversion, music is more usually famous for being able to relieve pain, which I can testify to from recent personal experience. Long story.
William Burroughs accounts how he once kicked heroin using marijuana and Louis Armstrong records. The assumption being that music can work as an analgesic. Like a chemical which matches the pharmokinesis of a headache. Or even that the music might not be merely blocking a neurological action, but that it might be conveying something more specific, as in the theory of Mozart and Tourettes sufferers. That music is a form of encryption as potentially powerful as computer code.
Experience has taught me that heroin-sodden jazz by Charlie Parker and John Coltrane has a predictable effect on my dentist's drill, and that it can ease the pain of a spinal tap during a recent hospital stay for Guillaime Barre syndrome. I was only allowed minimal doses of hospital morphine, so had to get it some other way, namely via the encoded form of those who encoded it in their music.
TBC
Tonite!
'Imagine' Oliver Sacks. BBC1.
5/30/2008
Vapour Trails Unzip the Sky. The End of The World?
But what were the reactions of similar tribes to the first vapourtrails in the sky? To something unprecedented in their cosmology or folklore. Panic? Anticipation?
Surely there must still be people alive who remember the occurence in their communities. Or anthropologists who were told what those first experiences meant.
Calling all anthropologists.
Surely there must still be people alive who remember the occurence in their communities. Or anthropologists who were told what those first experiences meant.
Calling all anthropologists.
5/22/2008
A Perfect Day
Another nutty professor claims that income is an indicator of intelligence. The working class are irredemiably, genetically stupid he says, and therefore should be discouraged from taking up university space better exploited by those more gifted by Nature - the well-off middle classes. The working class are simply gentically inferior and should get used to it.
Black people are disporportionately represented in the working class, so the good Doctor is also saying that they are genetically inferior too. That race is an indicator of intelligence, and that the superior races should be allowed to fulfill their genetic destiny and rule the earth. That the poor and racially inferior should leave the higher functions of society, requiring intellectual ability as measured by the infallible IQ method, to the white middle class descendants of Rhodes, Voerwerd and Jeffrey Archer.
Maybe some intelligent hack at the Mail would like to phone up Dr Charlton and ask him to explain the inherent racism of his crackpot theory. Now that would be a true indicator of intelligence among the superior white middle classes at The Mail.
Meanwhile, Britain continues to get drunker, and its drunks continue to get younger. The British seem unable to face the reality of life under Consumerism except through a thick alcohol haze. The Entire Soviet civil service had the same problem.
Surely all these things can't be connected in any way.
Black people are disporportionately represented in the working class, so the good Doctor is also saying that they are genetically inferior too. That race is an indicator of intelligence, and that the superior races should be allowed to fulfill their genetic destiny and rule the earth. That the poor and racially inferior should leave the higher functions of society, requiring intellectual ability as measured by the infallible IQ method, to the white middle class descendants of Rhodes, Voerwerd and Jeffrey Archer.
Maybe some intelligent hack at the Mail would like to phone up Dr Charlton and ask him to explain the inherent racism of his crackpot theory. Now that would be a true indicator of intelligence among the superior white middle classes at The Mail.
Meanwhile, Britain continues to get drunker, and its drunks continue to get younger. The British seem unable to face the reality of life under Consumerism except through a thick alcohol haze. The Entire Soviet civil service had the same problem.
"These rises paint a worrying picture about the relationship between the population and the bottle,"said Tim Straughan, chief executive of the NHS Information Centre.
Meanwhile, Brent Crude hits $134 / barrel.
Surely all these things can't be connected in any way.
5/05/2008
The Axis of Evil Destroys The Universe
Time Bandits. Film Four 444. 9.30. 5/5/08
' The point is Kevin, the universe is a bit of a bodge job. The Supreme Being only gave us 6 days, and so there's lots of holes. This is a map of the holes...'
The Sky At Night 666. BBC4 11.30. 5/5/08
Sir Patrick Moore to panel:
'What do you think of this 'Axis Of Evil' theory?'
What has to be said is that what Newton found worked on a planetary level didn't work on a larger scale. And so Einstein had to make the appropriate adjustments. To discover the explanation for what we could see in the wider universe. Who is to say that in another 100 years we won't have to readjust Einstein, or even accept that the universe is not perfect? That it is not consistent.
Now we find out that Og was right - more or less. That the universe is no longer universal. Science is not a pursuit of absolutes, of perfect laws. That science is a way we've evolved of keeping track of the imperfections in the laws of time and space. A map of the holes...
Or very nearly. The panel of respected cosmologists were repeating, almost word for word, Og's explanation to Kevin of the origins of the Universe, and the advantages to the average chancer of possessing a map of the holes in it. And more than that, within a few minutes of each other in the fabric of the TV continuum. What are the chances of that? At least they're better than our chances of actually meeting or contacting anyone from another galaxy, if the gathering at Patrick Moore's place were to be believed.
According to them, it's a bit of a mistake that we are here at all. And the time we've got left to even see any of the rest of the universe is so tiny, we might as well get used to the fact that we are going to just have to get along with our own species, and that no slender strangers from space are ever going to rescue us from ourselves.
And just as importantly, by depicting a universe which is far from orderly or perfect, it casts even more doubt (if any more were needed) that the universe was not designed by anyone or anything. No Supreme Being could have made such a bodge job of it.
' The point is Kevin, the universe is a bit of a bodge job. The Supreme Being only gave us 6 days, and so there's lots of holes. This is a map of the holes...'
The Sky At Night 666. BBC4 11.30. 5/5/08
Sir Patrick Moore to panel:
'What do you think of this 'Axis Of Evil' theory?'
What has to be said is that what Newton found worked on a planetary level didn't work on a larger scale. And so Einstein had to make the appropriate adjustments. To discover the explanation for what we could see in the wider universe. Who is to say that in another 100 years we won't have to readjust Einstein, or even accept that the universe is not perfect? That it is not consistent.
Now we find out that Og was right - more or less. That the universe is no longer universal. Science is not a pursuit of absolutes, of perfect laws. That science is a way we've evolved of keeping track of the imperfections in the laws of time and space. A map of the holes...
Or very nearly. The panel of respected cosmologists were repeating, almost word for word, Og's explanation to Kevin of the origins of the Universe, and the advantages to the average chancer of possessing a map of the holes in it. And more than that, within a few minutes of each other in the fabric of the TV continuum. What are the chances of that? At least they're better than our chances of actually meeting or contacting anyone from another galaxy, if the gathering at Patrick Moore's place were to be believed.
According to them, it's a bit of a mistake that we are here at all. And the time we've got left to even see any of the rest of the universe is so tiny, we might as well get used to the fact that we are going to just have to get along with our own species, and that no slender strangers from space are ever going to rescue us from ourselves.
And just as importantly, by depicting a universe which is far from orderly or perfect, it casts even more doubt (if any more were needed) that the universe was not designed by anyone or anything. No Supreme Being could have made such a bodge job of it.
4/30/2008
Grand Theft Auto Murder (Made in U.S.A.)
On the day when a man is stabbed by a crazed devotee of surrogate violence generator 'Grand Theft Auto', it does occur to make a list of the all other truly great, brand-leading products of American design and manufacture. Their triumphant design answers to the Rolex watch, the Mini, the Dyson, the diamond-frame bicycle, the Volswagen beetle, the cat's-eye, the Sony Trinitron TV, the Cheddar Cheese, Concorde, Chinese porcelain, French wine, Belgian chocolates etc etc.
It turns out to look like something like this.
The Bowie knife, the Winchester rifle, the Colt 45, the Mosquito fighter bomber, the atom bomb, the Stealth fighter, the Cruise missile, the cheeseburger, Coca Cola.
Apart from a few notable gadgets like the Fender electric guitar, 'Made in America' means either weapons or junk food. Or in the case of GTA, a world where human life is always dispensable, and there are no consequences and every millivolt of hatred for the human race can be expressed, and more importantly for sales of the product, learned.
It is yet another fantasy to imagine that fulfilling a violent dehumanising fantasy on a regular, sustained, systematic basis, with no moral or practical consequences, and no goals other than triumphalist domination of the assigned enemy by whatever force possible, does not transfer some of the values of that barbaric world to the user - the subject in this conditioning process. The fact that many, if not all of the witnesses to the attack in the Croydon queue seem to have believed that the incident was a publicity stunt by the developers - that the blood and screams were simulated - is more evidence of this effect. They were, in other words, prepared to discount the evidence of their senses and lapse into a world of virtual wish-fulfillment again. Like a pathologically alienated version of the dancers' anthem 'Everything is beautiful at the ballet".
It is equally deluded to insist that such role playing can be therapeutic, preventing inevitable explosions of real violence. The same argument which is still sometimes used to justify sexual pornography, strangely enough. That a fantasy rape is a replacement for the real thing rather than a rehearsal for it. Furthermore, this apology for technologically-induced triumphalism is nothing more than a confession that society is so rotten that it makes us all violent psychotics, and that without the help of computer games, horse-tranquillisers, distilled sugar beet, and other narcotics, we would all kill each other. That acting out the fantasy of killing your boss prevents you from actually doing it.
The 'real' solution of course, if that word means anything anymore, is to have a world where you don't feel like killing your boss, or every cyclist on the street, or everyone else who is IN YOUR WAY and preventing you from squeezing out whatever Life there is left in your time on earth after the demands of the job and bank and state have taken their 80% cut.
But that would be silly. And too much like hard work.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Practice does make perfect, it seems.
www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_Lynch_Linder_Walsh_20041.pdf -
It turns out to look like something like this.
The Bowie knife, the Winchester rifle, the Colt 45, the Mosquito fighter bomber, the atom bomb, the Stealth fighter, the Cruise missile, the cheeseburger, Coca Cola.
Apart from a few notable gadgets like the Fender electric guitar, 'Made in America' means either weapons or junk food. Or in the case of GTA, a world where human life is always dispensable, and there are no consequences and every millivolt of hatred for the human race can be expressed, and more importantly for sales of the product, learned.
It is yet another fantasy to imagine that fulfilling a violent dehumanising fantasy on a regular, sustained, systematic basis, with no moral or practical consequences, and no goals other than triumphalist domination of the assigned enemy by whatever force possible, does not transfer some of the values of that barbaric world to the user - the subject in this conditioning process. The fact that many, if not all of the witnesses to the attack in the Croydon queue seem to have believed that the incident was a publicity stunt by the developers - that the blood and screams were simulated - is more evidence of this effect. They were, in other words, prepared to discount the evidence of their senses and lapse into a world of virtual wish-fulfillment again. Like a pathologically alienated version of the dancers' anthem 'Everything is beautiful at the ballet".
It is equally deluded to insist that such role playing can be therapeutic, preventing inevitable explosions of real violence. The same argument which is still sometimes used to justify sexual pornography, strangely enough. That a fantasy rape is a replacement for the real thing rather than a rehearsal for it. Furthermore, this apology for technologically-induced triumphalism is nothing more than a confession that society is so rotten that it makes us all violent psychotics, and that without the help of computer games, horse-tranquillisers, distilled sugar beet, and other narcotics, we would all kill each other. That acting out the fantasy of killing your boss prevents you from actually doing it.
The 'real' solution of course, if that word means anything anymore, is to have a world where you don't feel like killing your boss, or every cyclist on the street, or everyone else who is IN YOUR WAY and preventing you from squeezing out whatever Life there is left in your time on earth after the demands of the job and bank and state have taken their 80% cut.
But that would be silly. And too much like hard work.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Practice does make perfect, it seems.
www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_Lynch_Linder_Walsh_20041.pdf -
"Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine say that brain scans of kids who played a violent video game showed an increase in emotional arousal – and a corresponding decrease of activity in brain areas involved in self-control, inhibition and attention."Gaming and Learning which is a serious responsible blog, is very positive about the benefits of gaming as an educational tool. But why should a tool as powerful as computer gaming only be able to teach nice lessons? The truth is that nasty lessons are easier, and more profitable, to teach.
4/27/2008
Cohen The Barbarian
Desperate to cling on to his schoolboy literati dreams, Nick Cohen, the Observer's head grump, again directs the monstrous anger of his guns against the internet. (In Books We Trust) This is a parasitic medium, he tells us, which is apparently proven by the fact that travel guide 'The Lonely Planet' does much of its research online, rather than going to the places it informs its readers about. He quotes Lonely Planet co-author Thomas Kohnstamm with the gem; "what I can't plagiarise, I can always make up."
But how much better then that those seeking information about, say, Colombia, draw their information directly from source, rather than relying on a capital intensive, cost-cutting medium such as print, from which Lonely Planet still earns most of its profit, in spite of its alleged shoddiness.
But where are we to find this source? Where are the people on the ground, the people with the real inside story, those who live in the country all the time. Not the playboy hacks flown in for a week to the local Hilton, and shown around their patch by a government-approved guide - or one affordable by the expenses department of the publishers concerned. Where are these fonts of local wisdom? Why, writing away 'for love' to use one of Cohen's sneers. Producing and publishing their own accounts online of the place they live in, based on real experience. But how can they be believed? As we all know, the less a writer is paid, the less truthful are his words. The closer he is to his subject matter, the more biased his opinion.
The failings of Lonely Planet, and much of the rest of the bankbound print media, are in fact an argument for more use of the internet in the form of the bloggers who Cohen despises. Of more elimination of the dubious middle man from Del Media.
In his yearnings for a return to the good old days of print, when hacks were hacks and civilians were civilians and both knew their place, Cohen displays a serious morbidity which will not do him any good in the long run, and which will gum up his synapses until he is indistinguishable from Victor Meldrew.
'Colombian Blog' Which describes itself as The Complete Resource on Discussion, Travel, Living In Colombia.
Bogota Blogger
As one commentor to this blog says here of the colombian political situation:
In the meantime, Nick Cohen howls like Lear against the storm, and those pesky bloggers simply refuse to go away. Why, he seems to ask, can't they all be as jaded and bitter as him and the rest of the print junkies at Grouchos, then the world would be a much happier, or at least better informed place, or at least, more profitably informed.. Where anyone living in the age of Wapping gets this idea is a mystery. How can anyone who saw the Miner's Strike buy the myth of the integrity of the Fourth Estate? Pretending that politics throughout the ages haven't been distorted by the press and the money the press needs to exist is a neat mental trick for a journalist to be able to perform with the truth. But it seems that writers are becoming more like their cousins, the lawyers and accountants, in that respect.
And how exactly do Nick and his grumpy fellow-hacks propose to stem this tide of filthy lies - which nobody even gets paid for? How do they propose to turn the clock back? What is it they actually want? The uninvention of the internet? The shackling or censoring or pricing of the internet to make all content pay for its keep? A Commissariat of the Inky-fingered to oversee the 'quality' of all content, and allow only the acceptable gems in the shop window as in the China and Iran which Cohen and Friends shed such crocodile tears over? Totalitarian regimes rigidly exclude all unnecessary information, they do not think it is the kind of truth their subjects need or which they are prepared to verify, and refuse to be accountable for its dissemination. As editors of The State News, they make their decisions on which information is profitable to publish and which not.
Cohen does not think blogs are necessary either, and almost says they are evil. So he has to either recommend their eradication by some means, which would put him on the dole, or use his column and its parasitic blog to try to poison as many people's minds as possible to the idea that their minds are capable of telling the difference between shit and sugar.
Reason not the need, Nick. Allow not nature more than nature needs, man's life's as cheap as beast's' And all that. Or, if you prefer a more modern sage: 'Let a thousand flowers bloom, let a thousand schools of thought contend.'
But how much better then that those seeking information about, say, Colombia, draw their information directly from source, rather than relying on a capital intensive, cost-cutting medium such as print, from which Lonely Planet still earns most of its profit, in spite of its alleged shoddiness.
But where are we to find this source? Where are the people on the ground, the people with the real inside story, those who live in the country all the time. Not the playboy hacks flown in for a week to the local Hilton, and shown around their patch by a government-approved guide - or one affordable by the expenses department of the publishers concerned. Where are these fonts of local wisdom? Why, writing away 'for love' to use one of Cohen's sneers. Producing and publishing their own accounts online of the place they live in, based on real experience. But how can they be believed? As we all know, the less a writer is paid, the less truthful are his words. The closer he is to his subject matter, the more biased his opinion.
The failings of Lonely Planet, and much of the rest of the bankbound print media, are in fact an argument for more use of the internet in the form of the bloggers who Cohen despises. Of more elimination of the dubious middle man from Del Media.
In his yearnings for a return to the good old days of print, when hacks were hacks and civilians were civilians and both knew their place, Cohen displays a serious morbidity which will not do him any good in the long run, and which will gum up his synapses until he is indistinguishable from Victor Meldrew.
'Colombian Blog' Which describes itself as The Complete Resource on Discussion, Travel, Living In Colombia.
Bogota Blogger
As one commentor to this blog says here of the colombian political situation:
"Let's hope the authority of the civil society can be strengthened and the wings cut of the politicians who have robbed the people by action or omission."It isn't all white sands and the quality of the pina coladas, Nick. And the more bloggers there are, writing without fear, the wider the view we can get of any country which allows freedom of expression. As for countries which don't allow freedom of expression, why would journalists, of all people, want to encourage anyone to go there in the first place? I know I know - because they are PAID to encourage them. Silly question.
In the meantime, Nick Cohen howls like Lear against the storm, and those pesky bloggers simply refuse to go away. Why, he seems to ask, can't they all be as jaded and bitter as him and the rest of the print junkies at Grouchos, then the world would be a much happier, or at least better informed place, or at least, more profitably informed.. Where anyone living in the age of Wapping gets this idea is a mystery. How can anyone who saw the Miner's Strike buy the myth of the integrity of the Fourth Estate? Pretending that politics throughout the ages haven't been distorted by the press and the money the press needs to exist is a neat mental trick for a journalist to be able to perform with the truth. But it seems that writers are becoming more like their cousins, the lawyers and accountants, in that respect.
And how exactly do Nick and his grumpy fellow-hacks propose to stem this tide of filthy lies - which nobody even gets paid for? How do they propose to turn the clock back? What is it they actually want? The uninvention of the internet? The shackling or censoring or pricing of the internet to make all content pay for its keep? A Commissariat of the Inky-fingered to oversee the 'quality' of all content, and allow only the acceptable gems in the shop window as in the China and Iran which Cohen and Friends shed such crocodile tears over? Totalitarian regimes rigidly exclude all unnecessary information, they do not think it is the kind of truth their subjects need or which they are prepared to verify, and refuse to be accountable for its dissemination. As editors of The State News, they make their decisions on which information is profitable to publish and which not.
Cohen does not think blogs are necessary either, and almost says they are evil. So he has to either recommend their eradication by some means, which would put him on the dole, or use his column and its parasitic blog to try to poison as many people's minds as possible to the idea that their minds are capable of telling the difference between shit and sugar.
Reason not the need, Nick. Allow not nature more than nature needs, man's life's as cheap as beast's' And all that. Or, if you prefer a more modern sage: 'Let a thousand flowers bloom, let a thousand schools of thought contend.'
The Snail Which Did For The Taliban
TRANSLATION: "THIS IS MAD, MY TAIL CURES A.I.D.S. AND THEY WANT TO MAKE ME EXTINCT!!"
The Cone Snail Genome Project for Health
undoubtedly represents another major advance in the cause of medical science. The potential for non-addictive pain relief, and the possible marginalisation of opiates must be a good thing, if only to make the job of winning the Afghan War cheaper by undermining the demand for opiates.
This humble species (Conus consors) is generally to be found in warm shallow seas, the marine habitat most at risk from rising sea temperatures and other human intervention, which isn't quite so good for it.
Luckily, we have already discovered this useful little beast and can now synthesise its secret ingredient and so don't have to worry about preserving its species for future harvesting or research. Its little act of kindness is done. But its new status re-emphasises the fact that we simply do not know what miracles we are destroying before we even know they exist.
Most scientists accept that there are still millions of species unkown to man. So with every acre of habitat and every species carelessly destroyed , the chances increase that their chemical gifts to us will also be lost forever. The future beneficiaries of Conus consors may not worry, but the future sufferers of aids and cancer who may go uncured because of our insane system of planet management may not be so lucky.
4/23/2008
The Death Of The Local
Several things are causing the death of the traditional british pub.
1. The assinine stubbornness and lack of enterprise of landlords and brewers, who want the public to buy their out of date service out of a sense of duty. the smoking ban was in fact an opportunity for governors to expand their clientelle, but instead they merely sulked.
2. Demographic changes- the arrival of cultures which do not rely on alcohol was a similar opportunity to diversify and expand, but was again missed because of parochialism and stupidity. The recent development of Halal pubs demonstrates the market for social drinking exists, it just needn't depend on drunkenness for commercial viability. The same market, only bigger, exists for young people, who at present are driven on to the streets to kill each other out of sight of drunken adults.
3. Pure market forces. The big chains swing such a degree of bulk buying power that they can easily outprice the local back street pub and the independent. And we're all in favour of devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism, no?
4. Property values. Again, who can argue with those lovely rising house prices? Not quite so appealing when they're cleansing communities of pubs, post offices, churches and schools, are they? when homes are merely a way of making money, communities disappear, and with them any need for communal experience and culture.
Halal Pubs
4/21/2008
South East London BT Blackout
An oddly under-reported little disaster.
For over a week now, thousands of BT Customers in South East London have been without telephone, fax or broadband connections due to a contractor 'slicing through a cable the thickness of an oak tree' - according to one BT technician in Pomeroy St, SE14 on sunday morning.
Businesses along the Old kent rd as far as new Cross have been effected, and while some subscribers have been lucky, and been able to persuade technicians to 'do them first', others may have to wait another week, or even longer.
Even at a time when the mobile phone is so common, a landline is a necessity, not a luxury, and the incentive to restore services should be more than the 60 pence a day compensation offered by BT. Unless, that is, BT is trying to send the message that its vulnerable tangle of cables is the technology of the past, and that any sensible person would switch to something more ethereal - or even to a cable provider, which at least has the benefit of smaller bundles of subscribers, in shorter lengths, to slice through.
For over a week now, thousands of BT Customers in South East London have been without telephone, fax or broadband connections due to a contractor 'slicing through a cable the thickness of an oak tree' - according to one BT technician in Pomeroy St, SE14 on sunday morning.
Businesses along the Old kent rd as far as new Cross have been effected, and while some subscribers have been lucky, and been able to persuade technicians to 'do them first', others may have to wait another week, or even longer.
Even at a time when the mobile phone is so common, a landline is a necessity, not a luxury, and the incentive to restore services should be more than the 60 pence a day compensation offered by BT. Unless, that is, BT is trying to send the message that its vulnerable tangle of cables is the technology of the past, and that any sensible person would switch to something more ethereal - or even to a cable provider, which at least has the benefit of smaller bundles of subscribers, in shorter lengths, to slice through.
4/11/2008
ITV Broke - Auntie Picks Up The Pieces
The mass audience is dead? Then the mass advertising audience is dead. Boo hoo. Perhaps this will mean fewer fat, sick, indoctrinated children, junked out on chemical foods and synthetic pastimes - as highlighted by this week's belated call for certain food poisons to be banned.
The only problem is that, according to this week's Ofsted Report, because it has spent its time being a socially responsible broadcaster, the BBC will now have to pay for the excesses, follies and anti-social opportunism of the commercial sector. In the same way, the taxpayer is now having to pay for the equivalent follies of the banks. When they make obscene profits from very dodgy investments, they get to keep the money and gloat about the universal benificence of the spriti of the free market. When the short-term greed of the market turns to disaster, the taxpayer pays.
The Licence to Print Money from TV commercials has finally expired, as it was always going to as technology gave more pesky power to consumers. Making them less and less like sheep. It transpires that as a basis for broadcasting, advertising was only ever a passing phase - at least in a responsible culture like Britain, which saw the limitations of the industrial marketplace from an early stage - having invented it. But why should the licence payer now pick up the pieces and buy Mr Grade's cigars and Rolls Royces? Why does the state owe the media billionaires a living for peddling their monumentally narcotic trash? Where is that written? Why does the taxpayer always have to pay for the business errors (the greed) of a marketplace which cannot see beyond its annual shareholders meeting?
Commercial TV and the advertising industry were warned almost a decade ago that the narrative TV ad was under serious threat from advancing technology - even the humble remote control eliminated commercials which cost as much as running and A&E department in an inner city borough for a week. Alan McCulloch of Saatchi's in 1999, urging the industry to adapt in order to survive: “TV advertising has to become more interactive. The agencies are failing to create new forms. Their heads are still stuck up their arses doing TV ads.” As were the heads of the TV companies.
crash08
The only problem is that, according to this week's Ofsted Report, because it has spent its time being a socially responsible broadcaster, the BBC will now have to pay for the excesses, follies and anti-social opportunism of the commercial sector. In the same way, the taxpayer is now having to pay for the equivalent follies of the banks. When they make obscene profits from very dodgy investments, they get to keep the money and gloat about the universal benificence of the spriti of the free market. When the short-term greed of the market turns to disaster, the taxpayer pays.
The Licence to Print Money from TV commercials has finally expired, as it was always going to as technology gave more pesky power to consumers. Making them less and less like sheep. It transpires that as a basis for broadcasting, advertising was only ever a passing phase - at least in a responsible culture like Britain, which saw the limitations of the industrial marketplace from an early stage - having invented it. But why should the licence payer now pick up the pieces and buy Mr Grade's cigars and Rolls Royces? Why does the state owe the media billionaires a living for peddling their monumentally narcotic trash? Where is that written? Why does the taxpayer always have to pay for the business errors (the greed) of a marketplace which cannot see beyond its annual shareholders meeting?
Commercial TV and the advertising industry were warned almost a decade ago that the narrative TV ad was under serious threat from advancing technology - even the humble remote control eliminated commercials which cost as much as running and A&E department in an inner city borough for a week. Alan McCulloch of Saatchi's in 1999, urging the industry to adapt in order to survive: “TV advertising has to become more interactive. The agencies are failing to create new forms. Their heads are still stuck up their arses doing TV ads.” As were the heads of the TV companies.
crash08
4/10/2008
The Flickry Future
Is the argument against video on photo-sharing site Flickr a logistical one? That it will slow down the experience? If so, deep under a mountain in a cold northern land:
Is it philosophical? Is the juxtaposition of two visual media somehow a negation of or to the detrement of either? Is it political in some way? I can see how it might be, but what exactly would signatories to the Anti-Video petition be putting their names to?
I understand that pro users have a lot invested in Flickr. A Pro account is almost a one-way street. - or so it seems to me. And I can see why they feel aggrieved when, as unofficial shareholders, their company radically alters policy. What are Flickr's stated reasons for doing this? Does Yahoo's flirtations with the Pearly Gates' mob have anything to do with it? Especially now, when Microsoft's breath is heavier than ever down Yahhoo's neck.
If Flickr is determined to ostracise its pro base, then there are many, many alternatives. And maybe the end of the Flickr hegemony is no bad thing. People may decide to target and exhibit their work differently. Is it so terrible that Flickr is diversifying? How will it get in the way? Who will be forcing anyone to watch videos? Is this a new form of media Puritanism? Surely the internet itself is all the evidence needed that the distinctions between the traditional media are obsolete? That the material and financial reasons for those distinctions do not apply online?
This should be interesting to watch, especially as the Flickr community isn't exactly solid on the issue.
4/01/2008
Shock Report. Immigrants Only Human, say Lords
According to a House of Lords report, immigration into Britain has no overall benefit for the poorest members of British society. Just like 'economic growth' and war, in fact.
Man for man and pound for pound, each immigrant only contributes roughly as much to the British economy as their British counterparts, and as usual, the working class doesn't benefit much at all. Not so much news as a giant April Fool joke. Only not funny. And if anything, further evidence that people are far more similar than they are different - which is an argument in favour of immigration, if anything.
The benefits of a diverse society, where even South Africans are allowed to influence British culture, are only a mystery to devout racists and hand-wringing liberals who cheered their brains out at the destruction of the trade unions and the closed shop. Without regulation of working conditions by workers, immigration was always inevitable in the 'free market', and those who rejoiced at the defeat of working class then are now squealing loudest at the effects of removing that layer of regulation.
So the anti-immigration lobby hate both the union-based regulation of the labour market and the free market which exploits a weakened trade union movement. That is classic doublethink, and I wish these people would make up their so-called minds.
Man for man and pound for pound, each immigrant only contributes roughly as much to the British economy as their British counterparts, and as usual, the working class doesn't benefit much at all. Not so much news as a giant April Fool joke. Only not funny. And if anything, further evidence that people are far more similar than they are different - which is an argument in favour of immigration, if anything.
The benefits of a diverse society, where even South Africans are allowed to influence British culture, are only a mystery to devout racists and hand-wringing liberals who cheered their brains out at the destruction of the trade unions and the closed shop. Without regulation of working conditions by workers, immigration was always inevitable in the 'free market', and those who rejoiced at the defeat of working class then are now squealing loudest at the effects of removing that layer of regulation.
So the anti-immigration lobby hate both the union-based regulation of the labour market and the free market which exploits a weakened trade union movement. That is classic doublethink, and I wish these people would make up their so-called minds.
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