08/08/08 Usain Bolt - Fake THAT!

After his world record-breaking 200metres victory this afternoon, Usain Bolt poses a lot of problems. For his competition - obviously; for his production line of accountants desperately trying to keep up with the workload; and for the coaches who have been preaching the gospel of Power-Sprinting for the last few decades. The same gospel of upper body strength and bulk which produced the likes of the hideously distorted Ben Johnson, and which fuelled the market for steroids and other bulk-enhancers.
Usain Bolt therefore poses the biggest problem to the chemists. From now on, coaches will be looking for long, rangy sprinters with excellent technique. These things are not easily faked with drugs. Not as easily as bulk, anyway. So the task of the cheats just became a little harder, and sports lovers can believe a little more easily.
If long and lean becomes a new body fashion, and leads to fewer immobile neckless gymnauts, so much the better. It might even reduce the amount of rage on the streets a fraction.
Unfortunately, all this depends on not thinking the unthinkable. And that doesn't feel right.

add. 21/8/08.
'Bolt Stakes His Claim As The Greatest Ever Sprinter'.
Richard Williams.Guardian 21/8/08.

"Perhaps it is too much to hope that he has also banished the suspicions that have undermined the integrity of Olympic sprinting for so long. But when you look at him, at his 6'5", 13st8lb frame and at the articulation of his limbs as he devours the track you might be forgiven for thinking that he, more than any other leading sprinter for several generations, might just be able to achieve such feats without artificial assistance. There is none of the physical distortion created by the excess muscle that powered recent generations out of the blocks. He looks balanced and natural.
Well, we can hope."

Olympics: Why a negative will be a massive positive.'
Paul Kelso, Guardian 18/8/08.

"There was no one aiming daggers at him as Carl Lewis did at Johnson in 1988, instead there were only compliments. Everyone who was gripped on Saturday will hope it stays that way."


Beijing Olympics 2008

08/08/08 Lucky Number Team GB

Does every British medal winner carry a number 8 on their back? To the casual but surprised TV viewer, it does seem as if this Chinese talisman has done no harm at all to the glorious medal tally of 'Team GB'. Which prompts the nerdiest Olympic question so far. What is the Olympic numbering system anyway?
People are naturally wondering why the British team are doing so well. On the principle that everything Gordon Brown touches turns to dust, and because he is hiding in Scotland, he can't posibly be to blame. Both John Major and the playing fields of Eton have been held responsible, which was worth a laugh. But no mention of astral forces. To be fair, The Mirror did print a feature on Chinese Numerology, but then forgot all about it in the goldrush.
The Chinese believe in this mumbo jumbo, and they seem to be doing fine.

Beijing Olympics 2008

08/08/08 Wanting To Believe In Sport

One sporting commentator after another is having obligatory doubts about the cavalcade of olympic superlatives of the last week. Not about the legality of the performances, but about sport itself as a form of drama.
Any columnist worth their ticket agonising about whether they actually enjoyed what they saw, or whether the experience was fatally tainted by the background echo of drugs. Was this almost superhuman display of speed and strength an authentic sporting achievement, or merely another disillusionment in waiting, like so many Olympic glories of the past 20 years? Is it even now possible to appreciate sport in the same way it once was? Is sport dead? At least, until there is some guarantee of authenticity.

The climax was the Jamaican track team's performance on sunday. Usain Bolt's contemptuous 'I Am The Greatest' before he'd even crossed the line, followed by the women's clean sweep of the medals in their 100m event were, sadly, almost unbelievable. And we want to believe. In sport, we have to believe. That is the point, the outcome must be fair. And in athletics, this is reduced to a simple matter of mathematics. Fastest, furthest, highest. This clarity is one thing which seperates it from fictional drama. Without genuine achievements and a result which can be trusted, sport doesn't exist. It fails to create the right chemistry in the viewer, and is reduced to a staged tableau. A cheap display of freaks and masochists.

After the hideous damage to the lives of the users, the worst damage of drugs in sport is their destruction of the bond of faith between performance and audience. The cynicism and doubt which every event now faces. And it doesn't matter if, as with Usain Bolt, he looks nothing like a Ben Johnson knucklehead on crack. Or even if the winner is as obviously innocent as the lovely Shelley-Ann Fraser, claiming after her race that

"Yam, banana and dumpling make top three!"

There will always now be a splinter of doubt digging into what should be a moment of joyful identification with a human being achieving something they want more than anything else in the world. The essential sympathy between 'player' and audience is destroyed, or cut short at best. It is not possible to feel sympathy with a cheat. And the prevalence of drugs makes everyone a possible cheat. Everyone is guilty until found innocent, which is not very sporting.

The victory today of Christine Ohuruogu was a very ambiguous experience. Giving the benefit of the doubt, it was a great personal achievement. Her 1 year ban and victorious appeal were hardly a perfect build-up. And she is now legally free to perform. But she is an exception, The truth is that by allowing the cheat to benefit more from the same amount of training as the athlete, it is of as much use in preventing injury and strees as it is in inducing more intense muscle activity.
Also, the enhanced performances achieved by cheating 'stay in the legs', as the athletes put it. So during the period the undetected cheat is in competition, he is setting the standard for the genuine athletes and forcing them to train harder than they might otherwise, causing injury and poisoning the competition. Like a rhodedondron bush poisoning the ground beneath it.
A temporary ban is therefore a puny punishment for the network of suffering caused by drug use in sport. It is almost something a businesslike cheat could budget for, or get someone else to budget for them.

If drugs do win the damage will be even more wide ranging. Until now, sport provided a useful antidote to the need to believe in Father Xmas. Somedays your team won, somedays it lost. That's life. But if the winners in sport are not really the winners, to enjoy the spectacle we have to use a lot of wish-fulfillment. Those nice hardworking supermen and women deserve their glory because we believe they do. The world is nice because I believe it's nice. All is perfect, C21st, Confucian Harmony. As the games come to a close, we go back to the unrelenting theme of the opening ceremony in a huge pretentious cosmic circle.
Not the most progressive of political symbols.
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Beijing Olympics 2008

B.B.C. 'good value for money' says Daily Mail

According to a MORI poll commissioned by the Guardian, and quoted in the Daily Mail, 53 per cent agree that the corporation represents 'good value for money'. More than 24% disagree strongly.

41 per cent agree that the licence fee is an 'appropriate' way of funding it, with 37 per cent disagreeing. 59 per cent of viewers agree that the corporation is making unique programming.

Only 30 per cent agree that the broadcaster is being successful in its stated aim.

Who'd have thought it?

EXODUS - MOVEMENT OF T'PEOPLE

ANTI-IMMIGRATION GROUP WELCOMES IMMIGRANTS

The Tories face an uncomfortable truth, namely, that urban regeneration is meaningless without the regeneration of communities. And with communities comes social cohesion, and with that comes a collective understanding of the real problems and the real enemies. And after the abject failure generations of Conglomerate Great Redeemers to deliver anything but inner city decay, drunken orgies and a workforce of shelf-stackers, some of the enemies are clear, and they also happen to be friends of the tory party and their defunct dogma of Free Market Worship.
Tory funded, market-worshipping political WonkTank 'Policy Exchange' condemned Liverpool and other minor British conurbations to extinction in their report 'Cities Unlimited' and are promoting mass-migration to new purpose-built developments on green belt land in Chipping Norton, Maidenhead and Guildford.

"Many of Britain's towns and cities have failed - and been failed by policy makers for too long. It is better to tell uncomfortable truths than to continue to claim that if we carry on as we are then things will turn out well. Just as we can't buck the market, so we can't buck economic geography either. Places that enjoyed the conditions for creating wealth in the coal-powered 19th century often do not do so today."

This is the ideology of the same Steam Age it pretends to be burying. Which is the same schizophrenia which makes David Cameron hijack the word community for propaganda purposes. He clearly doesn't understand either community or modern society, if he did he would realise the dilemma he is making for himself. If he does understand, then he is simply lying through his teeth.

13/8/08
Doktor Oliver Marc Hartwich, German chief economist of Policy Exchange appeared on daytime TV today to claim that:

"Canary Wharf, financial services, that's where the opportunities of the future are."

And that people in Liverpool are desperate to work in Canary Wharf, and should be encouraged to relocate. That would apparently solve the problems created by the wilful, needless devastation of the industrial areas inflicted by the policies of Margaret Thatcher, Keith Joseph and other revered tory witchdoctors. All of which makes the most visionary forms of communism look as practical as erecting a deckchair - financial services being a universally acknowledged source of mass employment with a fantastic record of creating happy family life and vibrant, friendly communities. As in the case of Guildford, for instance.
As long ago as 2004 Guildford won double honours in a report by the government-backed Giving Campaign, as both the richest and the meanest town in Britain. The losers in this competition were places such as Newcastle, Blackpool, Motherwell and Liverpool, but with poor old decrepit Sunderland clearly last. These defunct northern hellholes are also in disgrace for just not being unfriendly enough. Sheffield University's Friendship Report apparently rates Yorkshire as the least unfriendly place in Britain. The obviously need to learn the lessons of the sterile ratrace suburbs of the affluent, financially serviced south, where neighbours never meet, and the hospitals are among the worst in Britain, according to this year's The Healthcare Commission report.

The Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and The Cardiothoracic Centre Liverpool NHS Trust were rated second and third best respectively.
Bottom of table was Ealing Hospital NHS Trust in London, with a patient score of 65.06.
Mayday Healthcare NHS Trust (Croydon) and Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (Hackney, right next to Canary Wharf) also made it into the bottom three.

David Cameron finally woke up to the problem and called the report 'insane', possibly because he was touring the north at the time, and didn't want to be stoned in his carriage like Wellington after Peterloo, possibly because of the effect on property values in his leafy suburban hinterland. But if he really believes what he says, why does his party continue to support the lunatics who dreamt up this Thatcherite relocation of the Kulaks, and the ideology which created it? The uncomfortable truth is that Policy Exchange are the real tories, Cameron is just NuLabour with a Nu Haircut. Same cage, different circus.
Policy Exchange was set up in 2002 by Nicholas Boles, until recently London Mayor Boris Johnson's chief of staff. Say no more, and say it loud.

LONDON LOUSY TOO SAYS ADOLF

And now it turns out that the brilliant Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich doesn't think London is worth relocating to in the first place. It's too expensive, inefficient, the IKEAs are all wrong, the chips are the wrong shape, and the whole place is just not German enough. Just the sort of place to dump millions of resentful, lonely, unemployed northerners. So he's off. He's had enough and is going to cause trouble in Australia.
 The monumental blunder of his entire view of the world is his assumption that, allowed enough 'freedom', the market will generate a stable, law-abiding, harmonious community. And that healthy communities are only ever a bonus, a benefit of succesful capitalism. That the social duty of the workforce is therefore always to obey the demands of the market and know their place and be grateful.
 The truth is now the opposite. A genuine, functional community is now a marketing point for a workforce. A commodity in its own right. And in a world which has heard of email, thank you Doctor Hartwich, distance from London and all its horrors is not a problem for business. Proximity to London and its wasteland of community values, with all its crime and bitterness, is.
In a desperate age when the discovery of iron ore in Yorkshire would trigger mass migration, and the steam engine was the wonder of the time, Dr Hartwich's dogma may have been a brutal necessity in the progress of industrial capitalism.
This dependence on locally sourced raw materials is largely over, except for one, the workforce. Businesses will have to learn to 'source' the most important raw material first. And that is the workforce. And the happiest workforces live in healthy communities.

08/08/08 Ling-A-Long-A-Lympics.

It's only a matter of time before Adrian Chiles gives in to temptation or exhaustion and blurts out:

"I wanna tell ya a STORY."

The cosiness of the BBC output from the Ling Long Pagoda is positively Bygravian. With Granny Sue Barker as his sidekick, every elasticated slipper in the country will be at attention for the rest of the games.

But how long can this approach last? Is it an inevitable result of an ageing population? The voice of the grey pound? As Maxie himself might well have said, will it Linga Longa or pa-Go Da way of all flesh? Surely it's time for the BBC to get over the loss of Des Lynam, and employ some livelier presenters who know just as little about sport. More Russ Brand and less Russ Conway, in other words.
As Maxie used to say:

"That's a good idea, SON."

Ling Long Media Centre
Beijing Olympics 2008

Dawkins Says: Some Politics Are More Natural Than Others

Richard Dawkins' series on Darwin (11/8/08. Channel 4) made the important point that nasty nature does not excuse nasty people or societies - something which all grown ups already knew. Evolution is no more an excuse for barbarism than, well, religion. The only appropriate response to those who condemn evolution on the grounds that Hitler was inspired by Darwin's version of nature is the first rhetorical question of infancy:"And if Nature told you to put your finger in the fire?"
Except, of course that Hitler was not inspired by Darwin at all, but simply by the age-old technique of stock-breeding. If Hitler had understood the principle of Reciprocal Altruism which holds our complex society together and stops every post-office queue becoming a blood-bath, he would have been a much healthier person. Then he would have been ready for the revelation that the goal of evolution is merely change itself. It is the fear of change which is the real phobia at the heart of all anti-evolutionary propaganda. The morbid infantile need for the security of stasis.
Dawkins goes on to make the point that evolution has also been hijacked to justify the ruthlessness of capitalism. The delectable example of Enron was worth the hour alone, where Survival of the Fittest was perverted to The Mass-Suicide of The Ruthless. The selfish gene gains its objective by the dictum of You Scratch My Back - I'll Scratch Yours not by Look After Number One. And on a social scale, by co-operation, not competition. The nurturing, social instinct is genetically programmed in normal healthy human beings, it is environment and misfortune which distorts and distracts this true nature. Right wing politics are therefore unnatural; created by and for these poor casualties of humanity, who, if their ideology was implemented, would be the first in line for compulsory sterilisation.
Reciprocal Altruism is just another way of saying socialism, the collective organisation of humanitarianism in the effort to deal with the immense, dangerous complexities of the industrial world.
Of course, as a liberal, Dawkins cannot understand this, yet. He confuses co-operation with charity, and romanticises liberal reformism. He shows that he understands society less than the evolutionary forces underlying it, not realising that social reciprocal altruism does not lead to soup kitchens, but to political and economic power.

08/08/08. Georgia, The Olympic War.

The Olympic Wrestling tournament in Beijing should be interesting. Russia is one of the dominant powers, but Georgia has a long history of the sport, which it is very proud and possessive about.
Georgia does tend to specialise in the more physical Olympic events.

"Vano Grikhurov, the head coach of the Georgian National Weightlifting team, said that the sportsmen are in good shape, and that as they are highly skilled at judo their chance of winning is high. “I think that Georgia once again will get gold from Olympic Games this year,” said Grikhurov.

Their boxing team also has hopes.
It is not very hard to imagine the atmosphere when a Georgian hopeful meets a Russian in combat. It is to be hoped that this will happen, not for the headlines or sick spectacle of two innocent sportsmen performing a puppet war for our amusement, but to help settle the old question of the role of politics in sport.
If sport really is the panacaea preached by the blazers, Russia Vs Georgia for the Olympic boxing title will be a triumph of pure human endeavour and mutual respect over squalid, materialistic political squabbling. If not they will kick the living shit out of each other.
Perhaps the failure of rugby to be included in the Beijing games isn't such a bad thing after all.
Beijing Olympics 2008

08/08/08 China - The Opera.

No-one was going to be really surprised by the superiority of Chinese orchestration and mass choreography. But this was a production with some style and no cheesiness. Possibly the least laughable Olympic opening ceremony ever. Scary, some might even say.
The scale of the show managed to capture the scale of Chinese history and achievements and be visually stunning and mysterious. The general story being that China invented everything; that it is the senior civilisation, beating the other whippersnappers by thousands of years; and that it achieved all this through constant, ruthless Harmony in the Confucian tradition. No mention of Mao anywhere.
 Militaristic drumming, booful ickle kiddies in red frocks, flourescent flying spirits of the air and earth and fire and the glorious proletariat followed each other through the endless generations of firework-lit Chinese Time. Animism came and went. Buddhism arrived in a flourish of silk. Writing and paper and printing were scrolled out in an epic gleaming claim to global intellectual rights, patents and copyright. After a bizarre burst of Laughing On Command, the dancers lined up obediently behind Men In Black manipulating puppets.. What did that mean? And the depiction of Chinese pioneering navigators (well before anyone else, naturally) with scores of oars flailed by strong men in unison could only trigger one response in anyone who's ever seen Ben Hur. Slavery, which wasn't on the agenda at central committee planning. But this is China, slavery of one sort or another was and still is essential to its economy and success.
 There was very little to represent the New Fantasy China of liberty and unfettered exchange across borders, in spite of all the promises. Overall, the message was that China is essentially the same now that it was 5,000 years ago. The same doctrine of Peace and Prosperity through Unity and Harmony. An unconquerable regime built on the most stable of power structures, the pyramid. The constant glorification of the feudal past and its achievements cannot be brushed off as sentimentality, they mean it to continue, but with the help of the modern technologies and financial black magic of Wall Street and Canary Wharf. In return China is offering its political Wisdom of the Ages as a possible future model for the unstable, feverish west. You too can be immortal. All you need is to surrender to 'Harmony'.
 Orwell once described fascism as adopting from socialism only those aspects which were useful for the purposes of war. Chinese feudalism initially adopted those same aspects, now it chooses to cherry-pick from Consumerism instead.
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Ken Livingstone in Beijing
Beijing Olympics 2008

08/08/08 - First British Gold!

They're wild, their noisy, and thank god, they're British!
Britain claimed the first gold medal of the games when its team were the first to be arrested in the Political Demonstration Event (Pro-Tibet Class).
Iain Thom and Lucy Fairbrother performed their winning routine at the very epicentre of the games, the enormously pompous 'Bird's Nest Cage', and therefore gained marks for difficulty as well as beating the rest of the field by days.

The IOC have not decided yet whether this trial event will be retained for the London Games. And it remains to be seen whether being arrested for fomenting unrest in China is umpired in the same way as fomenting unrest in Britain. There are hopeful signs however in the recent record of the British government and the score it awarded to Maya Ann Evans for her Whitehall appearance in 2005 under Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.
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Naturally, the defamation has started. The messageboards are full of the usual miseryguts smearing Thom & Fairbrother as self-interested egoists in classic Pravda style. These people can never actually name any of the rewards of being put in a Beijing jail for broadcasting unwanted messages from the heart of a totalitarian regime, but they do know their gimcrack philosophy, like: 'Look after Number One', and 'Stuff you Jack, I'm Allright'. They have been taught that the weak should go to the wall, and are determined to stand by their dogma. If they only knew that 'Swampy' is now living in a mansion in Beverly Hills.

There are others who merely sneer at the mismatch. The defeatists who would have said the same to Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The type who don't even try.

Beijing Olympics 2008

Hitler's Chauffeur Goes Free!

Neither Emil Maurice nor SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Erich Kempka , Hitler's drivers, were ever prosecuted at Nuremburg. Why should poor schmuk Salim Ahmed Hamdan face the same vengeance as Goering, Milosevic or Saddam?
The U.S. case is that Terrorism is different to War. 'Tis expressly against the law of arms' - and so the gloves are off. As George W Bush texted:

"If you feed a terrst, or fund a terrst, UR a terrst!".

Fine. In that case those who sabotage civilian aircraft are terrsts, as are those who fund them. Why isn't self-confessed terrorist Luis Posada Carriles subject to the same military process instead of being granted bail by the US legal system? Why wasn't Bin Laden's chauffeur treated the same as a man wanted in several countries for the first act of midair terrorism in the western hemisphere and a string of other attacks on non-military targets?
 And why aren't those who funded him and his bloody campaign being prosecuted? Such as George Bush.

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Carriles admissions to NYT.

'Shoot Forty Dustmen' - says Arthur Lowe

Captain Mainwaring's pomposity is funny, but we don't want to be like him. Our sense of humour is there partly to protect us from things we don't like by making them seem ridiculous. Arthur Lowe's performance does this job perfectly. His skill as an actor combined with equally skilled (or fortunate) casting created one of the classic comic characters of English literature.
The writers of Dad's Army' repeatedly claim that 'Mainwaring became Arthur and Arthur became Mainwaring' - in the manner of many famous personalised roles. Yul Brynner was famous among the technicians who worked his stage show at The Palladium for 'being' the part. Arthur Lowe seems to have been closer to his masterpiece than most. Accounts of him by wartime and theatre colleagues seem to confirm this.
When this kind of extreme sympathy exists between a fiction and its creator, the character of one is likely to reflect on the other. Fans who shout 'I Don't Believe IT!' at Richard Wilson in the street are displaying the way in which the fiction is identified with the creator. So what happens when facts about the creator become known to the consumers of the fiction?
Warren Mitchell was known for political beliefs which were the opposite of his creation, Alf Garnett, and that only served to give Johnny Speight's monster more depth, if anything. For generations, gay actors hid their sexuality in order to keep acting. Rock Hudson knew that audiences of the time would not have been able to tolerate his depiction of macho roles knowing that he was gay.
Having been given a copy of The Complete Dad's Army Scripts by a perceptive friend, I was a little disturbed to read this reminiscence by Bill Harman, Assistant Floor Manager for the early series.

'Arthur's politics seemed to a young, idealistic naive liberal thinker like myself to be somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan. He was a big fan of Enoch Powell, and claimed to be a prominent contributor to the fund set up to promote Powell to the PM's job. A Labour government was in power, and one day at rehearsals, while a national garbage strike was causing major sanitation problems countrywide, Arthur unfolded his Daily Express, tapped his finger on the headline and said "Look at this" and he read out loud - "Edward Heath says it will be a hard road to victory." He put down the paper and said: "I don't want to read that sort of pathetic nonsense, I want to open my morning paper and see 'Forty dustmen shot this morning." Then we'll get things moving!" Noting my surprise at this outburst he said to me, "Do you know what the eighth deadly sin is?" "No." I replied. "Tolerance" said Arthur. I could see a twinkle in his eye as he said it, obviously tickled at the reaction his statements provoked.


'Bill Harman Remembers'. Series Three, Episode Ten. Dad's Army Complete Scripts. Jimmy Perry & David Croft.

Now, we cannot be absolutely sure what kind of 'twinkle', and have to accept that the Assistant Floor Manager ranks only slightly higher than the studio cat in the production hierarchy, but Bill Harman's memory seems clear enough to be taken more or less at face value - and Lowe was not known for his drunkenness on set. Harman also seems to be basing his account on more than one event. So what effect does this knowledge have on our sense of humour? How does it invoke the Rock Hudson Effect? How do artistic appreciation and political hostility co-exist?
After thoroughly enjoying Saturday's BBC special, I can testify that they can co-exist. But how is it possible to put aside extreme political hostility and laugh? The character of Mainwaring isn't tainted in any way by this knowledge of Arthur Lowe's politics, but then, the real-life Mainwarings of the 40's and 50's would have been the sort of people backing Powell in the 60's. In their golf clubs and Rotary dinners, anyway.
As reactionary clowns go, the role of Mainwaring and its actor are very close, but unlike the Mitchell/Garnett chemistry, the sins of the actor tend to reinforce the absurdity of the role, increasing the deflation when the pomposity is pricked, and making us laugh more. In that case, the only people who should be worried by this revelation are, firstly, the latter day Powellites. Captain Mainwairing is making us laugh at Powell as well as himself and Hitler - the ultimate comic target. And secondly, those who feel that Arthur Lowe does not deserve to be made a Licensed Fool in this way, that his personality should not become part of the joke. That he deserves a better fate than Jeremy Clarkson.

08/08/08. Plus an Eclipse on a Leap Year. Propitious Omens for Olympics?

"An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star."
(Lear Act I scene II)

China has unblocked internet access to human rights sites such as Amnesty; and also the BBC and other western news agencies. Which raises the question; If now, why not a long time ago? Why now?
But that only raises the further question: 'What are the Beijing Olympics for?'. And when they are over and have done their job, will this new liberalism end? With that surely in mind, how many Chinese will be prepared to be one of the thousand flowers prepared to bloom? Given that they know that the purpose of Mao's famous dictum was not a poetic version of Glasnost, but a simple trap for unwary and over-exhibitionist dissenters.
On the day of its total solar eclipse, China unblocks the BBC, Amnesty and other western news agencies. Which raises the question, if now, why not before? The theory is that this is due to something called 'Olympic pressure'. On the day of its total solar eclipse, China un-eclipses the internet, which is another alignment for the mystics to chew on. Will this event be as passing as the cosmic one? Will the 'light' of information be as brief as the darkness of the eclipse? The policy wonks in the Beijing Ministry of Truth will be laughing at the cruelty of this joke at the expense of hope and freedom.
The current Chinese dynasty are wearing all their astrological belts and braces. The time, date, the year, and they would have known about the eclipse. So how does this primitive superstition marry with the doctrine of dialectical materialism which, as professed communists, they are bound to with hoops of steel . The truth is that the P.R.C. is merely a modern incarnation of the feudal oligarchies which have ruled it for thousands of years, with all the primitive baggage of that system, and just as far from socialism as any of the other super-powers.

Sarika Watkins-Singh Away Each Hour Of Hiraeth

What a storm in a teacup. But perhaps Sarika Watkins-Singh's words on the courtroom steps, delivered in pure Valleys brogue, will soften the hard hearts of those lurking with their legal micrometers and geiger counters, searching for every possible infraction, inconsistency, permutation, logical conclusion and slippery slope.
“I just want to say that I am a proud Welsh and Punjabi Sikh girl.”
How many other religions demand that jewellery be worn? Christianity doesn't, so they can all pack their moaning bags for a start. Either all state schools are secular, in which case everyone knows the score, or you have to accommodate the clear demands of the faiths involved. And since the government has caved in to superstition and made schools include 'an article of worship' in the curriculum, accommodations have to be made. In this case, the wristband is not in fact jewellery, but a spiritual handcuff, as the judge understood.
If the rule is there for H&S reasons it would be different, but if the rule is about adornment and the slippery slope to harlotry in the back of the class, this religious tag doesn't qualify. It is not adornment, it is a sign of faith.
In fact, it would be educational for young minds to be faced with this nice distinction, and be tutored towards an understanding of it. This would make the school experience more rewarding, and less confrontational. Teach them what the word 'nice' means, for a start.
They might also pause along the way to note that the culture of the Aberdare Valley, and much of industrial south Wales is partly the history of a once-banned non-conformist religious sect in the shape of the baptists. This is inconsequential enough in itself, but does at least demonstrate that history doesn't stand still, and that we are always a part of it.

I Live in Peckham. I Feel Safe.

I regularly walk the streets of Peckham, New Cross, Deptford and Bermondsey at night, alone, without feeling afraid. So do many other people I know, of both sexes and all sizes, and all of us have done so for many years without any trouble. How can this be possible in an areas which has seen such terrible slaughter? Especially in the past six months. We are loudly told that nowhere in Britain is safe. So my friends and I should be cowering behind double-locked doors until the mini-cab angel appears to escort us safely through the apocalyptic urban charnelhouse to our destination - if we are to believe the media, rather than the official statistics.
Meanwhile, the teenage boys who live in neighbouring flats are definitely terrified. They rightly feel in danger, and have the experience to justify their fears. They retreat into drink and drugs and TV, and choose to play the waiting game, putting their lives on hold until they reach an age when they imagine they will be safe. Several have even given up on school for this reason. In much the same way, teenage girls skip a stage of the real, dangerous world, and rush into motherhood to gain an identity of some kind, and with it some status. Teenage boys can gain a sliver of the same status by being the father, but this is not enough alone.
Why are young, fit, strong men, able to run like the wind, more afraid of their environment than me and my peer group? Why are they killing each other? The simple answer is because their environment is as suitable for them - as a species - as a desert is for a dolphin. In ecological terms, it is a hostile environment. Young homo-sapiens is not an urban animal - at least, not the kind of urban we have in London now. And as less real money is invested in nurturing them through their adolescence, and as the last shreds of community (look it up in an old dictionary) are torn apart by the tax-subsidised property industry and the road transport lobby, the chances of them growing into fully functioning human beings in this wasteland are getting longer with each shopping mall and gated yuppie estate.

The reason I feel safe and they don't is because, in spite of being immediate neighbours, we live in completely different worlds. My peer group have a non-geographical surrogate community created out of work and experience.
Teenagers have not had the time to establish such networks, and because of the failure of the education system and destruction of community spirit, many will never have much of a chance to. They are forced to fall back on the only support they know, from the tribal Old School network, which can carry with it all kinds of infantile vendettas and can be intensely territorial. Also, many will not get jobs, and any they do get will be menial and demeaning - and as such they are branded as a Loser among their peers, who watch the same TV and see the same images which glorify wealth as the only quality deserving of Respect.
They also see politicians and businessmen, the most respected members of society, routinely lying and breaking the law to get richer and even more respected, and they naturally assume they are just as entitled to resort to crime as anyone else.
They see politicians and businessmen starting wars to get rich, and naturally assume that if human life is that cheap to the most respected members of society, that they are just as entitled to place the same value on life to get what they want.
The media have recently been accused of glamorising knife crime, and of deliberately making people afraid, all of which is naturally true, but the overriding message glorified in the press, on TV, in music, movies, online, and by the games industry is that You Are On Your Own. Nobody will look after you but you. You are responsible for your own fate. There Is No Such Thing As Society. Their parents are bombarded with the same crippled ethos, and this is the result.
The media are striking back by accusing the government of lying. The recent statistics which show violent crime to be no worse than in the past are being distorted. The real rate of stabbings, in particular, being blunted by the reluctance of victims to report to the police.
There are no ways of knowing how much real truth there is to any of this speculation, but none of it alters the essential truth, that children across the country, but particularly in the inner cities, are being systematically robbed of their right to a normal, productive adolescence, and robbed of their opportunities to lead healthy, fulfilled lives. They are being robbed of their true individuality, and a synthetic substitute personality installed instead. One indifferent to the suffering of others, and ruthless in pursuit of its own interest. Perfect Alan Sugar material, in fact.
They are being robbed left, right and centre, and all the metal detectors, curfews, mandatory sentences and boot camps in the world won't undo the theft without massive, wholehearted, profit-free investment in communities and their people - all of them.
 In a world in which long-distance gap-year grand tours of the world are routine for some young people, others, such as my young neighbours, live in a virtual state of seige, behind invisible walls built of schoolday allegiances and a dozen petty squabbles which escalated into violence.
'Stevie's' friend sells a dog to someone else. A friend of his recognises the dog as belonging to a friend of theirs, and so it all kicks off, ending up with stanley knives drawn and 'Stevie' ending up in hospital.
After that, a quarter mile section of the Old Kent Rd is out of bounds. As is the area near either of two rival schools, and much of Peckham and New Cross because of previous, pointless squabbles for Respect. Squabbles which would never happen if there was some achievable purpose to their lives. It is easy for the columnists and radio shock jocks to sneer that they had it tough and they made it to the top. They had the benefit of communities which still worked, and in many cases free university education. They grew up before the profit fetish had destroyed the youth service and the spaces children used to play and grow in. To today's generation of teenagers, the city is a battlefield, not a playground or the cornucopaeia of 'opportunity' and 'choice' touted by the media. It is their version of the cutthroat competition displayed by the nice adult middle class they see ruling the world. And this bearpit is how we teach them to be adults. This is their Nanny State. And their almost constant anger and resentment is entirely natural.
TBC

Poor Chav. Hate-Word Vandalism

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One meaning of the word 'chav', as now used, is as a derogatory label for a superficial person addicted to clothes with designer labels. A way to slag someone off. A superficial label in its own right which says more about the user than the person they are slagging off. By their own definition, people who use chav in its new, malicious sense, are therefore a bit of a 'chav' themselves - not to mention being a monumental slag.
Originally a gypsy word for child or youth, chav was commonly used as a term of endearment and greeting among the working classes. As a synonym for 'mate', as in a dozen regional dialect equivalents. 'Butt' and 'wuss' and 'man', for instance. It is there in the Only Fools and Horses dvd box set - from Boycie, if I remember, and it must be somewhere in the collected scripts of Galton & Simpson, and Croft & Perry. It was a real, helpful, social word, available to all to ease the flow of conversation and make a working relationship easier to maintain. And now it has been kidnapped, subjected to a garish media makeover, and turned into an insult. Now it is a slur whose only purpose is to generate the emotions of hate and contempt. All it can ever do is cause trouble - and for what? Why do we need to sacrifice a perfectly innocent, useful word to make way for this term of abuse? It's an act of vandalism far worse than anything any chav would spraypaint on a concrete wall in Walthamstow. Why does New Grub Street need it?
'Chav' also means a person with a blinkered or ignorant frame of mind, susceptible to loud aggressive behaviour in public, and a generally instinctive, hedonistic lifestyle. (Again like the Daily Mail and The Sun) But in fact it is now a term so wide as to be meaningless, other than in terms of its one true reference point, social class. However the Hackocracy likes to spin it, chavs are the working classes on their day out. On Epsom Downs in their funny hats, singing their raucous rude songs about winkles and puddings and beer. The same sneers can be heard in every Servant - Master gag in human history. They are a reflex defence mechanism of a middle class under threat from below. In this case from a working class with more spending power than ever and the historic new ability of co-ordination and communication. It is therefore more necessary than ever to control the language as well as to convey the message that the lower orders are simply not capable of dealing with money or success or fame - that they are simply too vulgar. As the Daily Mail calls the Beckhams: "The celebrities that taste forgot." As if The Mail was an arbiter of taste. 
Farcically enough, by calling them 'chavs' the Mail is patronising the working class with a word which does in fact mean 'child'. But that is no excuse for giving hate such a word to use. In this case, one which enables the user to feel innately superior to a vast sector of humanity, and also to feel horror at the prospect of any possible bond or common purpose with these 'Yahoos' - another example of a universal term of alienation. A word which reinforces the notion of inequality; that some people are simply more human than others, and therefore more deserving of the good things of life. And some people are just animals who deserve to be herded and bred and driven and eventually culled like cattle .

From being the first word a baby heard, 'chav' is now a hate word. Another way of dividing people from each other rather than bringing them closer together. That is a little linguistic tragedy, but as part of the greater ruthless swindle of Consumerism, it is as much a babykiller as the girl who oils the spring that turns the thing that winds the nob, that makes the thingumybob - that's going to win the war!
Poor old chavvy is just another victim of this need. Another Rose Cottage in the path of the motorway. It's a shame the Fabian Society still seems to think it can have the motorway and the cottage. That it can eradicate the symptoms of class conflict without removing the causes. But what else can you expect from people in straw hats who travel by punt? Why can't they just say what they mean? People who use chav as an insult are just slags.
Already, entire towns are being labelled Chav Towns. The hunger of the media for stereotypes is insatiable.
And now the hate sites have started up, inciting violence against these new sub-humans.
One particularly raving lunatic claims of Stourbridge:

But beware, anyone not drinking Stella will be immediately glassed by some footballer’s jumper wearing try-hard and then kicked around the floor via his Rockport’s for being ‘a gayer’.

Immediately.
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3/11/08 John Prescott on Class

Speed Cameras Don't Kill People - People Driving too Fast Kill People

The Burghers of Swindon (a dead town famous only for its page 3 models) have apparently decided to give up speed cameras and spend the money on some other, unspecified method of traffic control. Naturally, the mad petro-apologists are out in force again, claiming that speed cameras cause more accidents than they prevent, specifically, by causing a 'concertina-effect' as traffic speeds up between camera areas, then slows suddenly as it approaches them.
This argument that cameras cause people to drive recklessly is invariably made by the same people who claim that the poor are not forced by poverty to steal. That that the individual is always responsible - for the behaviour of their children, for their income, for all their misery - but not for driving too fast and for ignoring the safety of others while driving a car. Many drivers see speed limits as recommended doses, or serving suggestions, rather than rules which are there for the benefit if everyone and which, sadly, are there to be obeyed - Jeremy. The individual is always to blame - except when in a car as powerful as 100 horses - which may well be true.
Human beings granted superhuman power have a record of becoming monsters. The same principle that Power Corrupts is just as true about Joe Soap in his Vauxhall Sinatra as it was about messrs Schickelgruber and Djugashvili with their shock troops and tank battalions.
Happily, there is some hope in the coincedental news today that drivers who kill with their cars are now more likely to face possible prison sentences. They are still to be allowed to reduce you to a vegetable, or put you in a wheelchair for life, or indeed shorten your life drastically, and still only face a fine of just over £2000. But if they manage to kill you, your death is to be treated a bit less like an overhead of the transport system and more like a murder.

B.R.A.K.E.

Political Correctness - Sneering in Safety

Or as it used to be known, in real English, 'respect', or 'decency' or 'fairness'. In the good old pre PC Days, men were men, and the little women and lower classes and all 'lesser breeds without the law' knew their place. Nobody had to worry about offending anyone or exploiting them because of their sex or skin colour or other circumstances of birth. It was the natural state of affairs and accepted by all.

BOOK LEARNING

And then people started to learn to read - even slaves. And they started to get ideas, and almost immediately realised that their lives were not worth any less than those who were patently living much more comfortable and enjoyable and longer lives - that they were as deserving of respect as anyone richer or whiter. That was when the rot set in.
The most famous expression of this newly emerged class-consciousness in recent memory being the four words 'I have a dream', which also happens to be the most concise expression of the demand for universal respect and equality of opportunity. From then on in the USA, it was not politically correct to treat black people as cattle. The same formal rights had been won for white women in Europe some decades earlier. Clearly, a consensus was growing. And when the newly liberated ex-colonies were added to the global masses demanding the right to have a dream, it became obvious that radical change was possible. The '60's' were upon us.

POWER OF DREAMING

The power of this message was naturally very frightening to some, with its unavoidable implication of equality and the end of privilege. Being allowed to dream implies the leisure to dream, which implies that lifetimes of futile backbreaking labour are a thing of the past - for all. That everyone has the right to be treated with equal respect and enjoy a decent chance of advancement. Unfortunately, that is not possible in practise in our particular social operating system. It is not a command it understands, and one which crashes the system.
So the word 'respect' which everyone understands as a good thing, must be replaced with a more ambiguous, slimier word, or better, a phrase - indicating something thoroughly evasive, shady, suspicious and nasty. Everyone hates politicians. So make respect 'political', and you're half way there. Imply that respect is to be enforced in some way with the spinsterish word 'correct', and the demolition of respect, and the creation of the monster 'political correctness' is complete, and the mass media fighback against the struggle for respect and fairness can go ahead without appearing to offend the memory of a media saint, Dr Martin Luther King. The media has a word it can sneer in safety, albeit one it sdtole from the stodgy academic pages of a feminist treatise, and the career of the modern media hound is created. The snappy little liemongers who love to get their muzzles dirty and bloody for their paymasters in the Bahamas. The likes of Jon Gaunt, Carole Palone, Dan Leslie, Richard Littlejohn, and their massed clones are more to be pitied than censured really. It must be punishment enough to bear that eternal cold hatred for mankind in their souls.

DESTITUTE LAWYERS HOME

In truth, what is now termed 'political correctness' is really a combination of natural everyday developments in modern society and nothing to do with party politics or correctness'- whatever that is.
Firstly, as a result of the massive expansion of the middle classes who do not Know Their Place, we are living in a far more litigious society than ever. This is a direct result of more people being able to read, write and spend. And so schools, local authorities, hospitals, and anyone else likely to risk a suit for damages has to take precautions, and these have to be written down and any employees trained in their application and blah blah blah.. I fall asleep even thinking about it.
Which is the state of mind perfect for surviving the other factor at work, namely the vastly increased bureaucracy made possible by computer technology, and its application to monitoring our lives in closer detail than ever before.
Almost every 'PC' story smirking from the smudgesheets of the Daily Mail can be filed under one or both of those two causes. The desire to get rich quick, and the need to control the lives of the masses. Both of which are vital to preventing a society which is capable of universal respect, and both of which are core values of the Daily Mail and the rest.

Sport R.I.P.

So much for all the promises of a clean tour this year. That cycling was now free of drugs.
There is almost no moral difference between the professional sport of today and the amphitheatres of antiquity. The degree to which human life is bought and sold is the same. Modern sportsmen may not be expected to die for our pleasure any more. But they certainly destroy their bodies in all sorts of ways for money, and the result is the same, our gasps at their performances, which wouldn't be as loud or profitable without the drugs which turn the athletes into chemical robots. The implications of genetic engineering in ' sport' are chilling - to abuse a noble word.
The reasons for these modern circuses are also very similar to the reasons of the Caesars. As a distraction. But also as a vast marketing machine for Consumer junk of all sorts.
The Olympics is often still unthinkingly held to be a wonderful display of physical perfection. A kind of global Agricultural Show, where the finest specimens of cattle and crops were paraded and garlanded by conformity to the rules of the Association. These standards of perfection have always been sinister and poisonous, and they still are.
The only difference between the modern Ideal of Perfection and the Classical one being that the former was a visual depiction of hereditary, theistic, hierarchical power, of the ethos of the God King who does not have to compete for his position, and whose body is therefore soft and undistorted by physical work. Praxiteles did not tend to worship muscle .
The modern bucket-necked ideal perfected by the gymnauts and their steroid suppliers is one of pure power. A depiction of the ethos that Might Is Right. That the thug with more muscle than you has the right to rule over you. Which is the same message pumped out by Hollywood.

Stuff the Pope and the Mullahs and the Rabbis, Women Now have Abortion on Demand via The Internet..

"Women living in countries where abortion is restricted - including Northern Ireland - are using the internet to buy medication enabling them to perform an abortion at home, it emerged today.A medical study found more than one in 10 customers on one of the most well-known websites needed a surgical procedure after taking the medication.Women in more than 70 countries, including Northern Ireland, have used the internet site Women on Web to purchase the drugs for £55 a time. "

So much for the sovereignty of elected government.
The women in NI are obviously committing a prosecutable offence, so have any been prosecuted? And if they are criminals, how are they going to be detected? The same way that China manages its' dissidents?
Of course, this does mean that if women in primitive regimes can get hold of chemical abortions online, they can also get hold of almost any kind of contraception. So there shouldn't really be any need for RU486 and the rest.
The only difference is that contraception is a constant expense, whereas abortion is £55 a time. And while there are always accidental pregnancies, the main problem are the arrogant, punitive administrations which pander to one of the various oppressive theologies or other. Now they can all kiss the arse of any woman with the price of the drugs and access to a computer.
But that's breaking a democratically determined law. So what happens next?
The internet has, in this case, enabled women to ignore the laws of the government elected to make them. So what is the point of McGuinness And Paisley placating the Pope if women can simply go around the barrier of state? If the country women live in says they shall not have abortions, and they contrive to have them, they are breaking the law, and there's nothing the offended legislature can do other than tell Google to block all traffic to sites offering this type of help.
Is this going to happen? Or are backward states which refuse women the freedom of their own bodies going to have to be dragged into the C20th, and realise they are fighting a losing battle against the power of the world wide web. Another triumph for the power of individual global communications. A repeat, in fact, of each technological advance which has wrung slices of liberty from the religious powers of the day.
As for the reports of the risks, the women taking them are perfectly aware of the risks they face in childbirth, and are making their choice between the two. A choice denied them by their governments.
Will this mean that governments are now under more incentive to respond to the new power of their electorate to ignore the commands of the state and follow their own morality? And if so, what sort of society will be created?
 Are we beginning to sit in the driver seat with our politicians between the shafts of the cart at last?
‘The Internet may fairly be regarded’, wrote one of the judges involved in the case, ‘as a never-ending worldwide conversation. The Government may not, through the CDA, interrupt that conversation. As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion’.
The Architecture of Freedom -- and of its enemies John Naughton