Tory Trots

All conservatives are commies, this week.
As late as last year, most tories would have wearily patronised anyone attacking obscene banking bonuses as being completely out of touch with the realities of the business world. These sums were essential to keep the best talent, and maintain the highest standard of practice in the banking industry, we were parentally reassured.
Today, with the masonry still collapsing, the tories are now the most vocal in their outrage at the very idea of rewarding failure in this way. Today's Daily Express would have front-paged a picture of Sir Fred Goodwin dangling from a gibbet if it could have. And George Osbourne, the Bullingdon Blagger, is frothing that

“Whichever way one looks at it, this obscene pension is unacceptable"

'Obscene'? Six months ago it was a healthy sign of a vibrant, dynamic progressive industry, facing the challenges of the future with confidence and resolve.
And other bollox.
So is this complete about turn evidence of innate conservative malleability - the ability to hold contradictory opinions - and all the political implications of that failing? Or is it evidence that the conservative mentality always tries to solve problems by finding a victim it can punish? It could even be both. But it certainly isn't evidence that tories are any good at realising that you can't cure smallpox by lancing the spots.

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On The Halls

I've just read two biographies of George Robey back to back and both authors say that all comedy since has been shite. I've noticed this with some Music Hall freaks. They even despise Variety.
But none of them were writing after seeing the effects of The Comedy Store and All That. What is known as Alternative Comedy. What they seem to admire in the Halls, and bemoan the death of since, is exactly what the current generation of standups is delivering. It seems to me.
And certainly none of them saw Bill Bailey's Amazing Guide to the Orchestra last week, with the hilarious performance of The Swan on tuned alpine cow bells. What did it remind me of? And then the fuzzy black and white memory came to me of a row of suit-tailed harmonica players, one a demi-dwarf with the enourmous bass harmonica, playing musical chairs to the William Tell Overture on Sunday Night at The London Palladium.
So what I really want to know is, has there ever been a funnier time on the British stage? And whether funnier or not, isn't much of what happens on the comic stage (and TV) now very similar to the bizarre world of the music halls?
'Alternative comedy' and the punk rock movement were cultural twins. The same general gamete of anti-glitz created them both. And John Lydon maintained that he was not a rock singer but a music hall performer in the British style. An angry, latter day Billy Bennett, possibly. The surrealism of Bennet is certainly there in Eddie Izzard and Ross Noble and John Cooper-Clarke. And Lor-luv-a-duck, Marie Lloyd's real name was Victoria Wood, who could have easily penned the gloriously ironic 'A Nice Quiet Day' or 'Don't Have Any More Missus Moore'.

Now I works just like a good'un
And I isn't over strong
And I'm mostly on me trotters all the time
So I'm glad when Easter Sunday or a Whitsun comes along
'Cos a day of perfect rest is really prime.
So I lately took it easy 'cos I had a day to spare
With the wife and kiddies in their sunday clothes.
Twas a treat to make me mind up for a bit of country air
And the pleasures of a quiet day's repose...

Pornography does Dehumanise, and It's On Your Street Corner

Research at Princeton University in New Jersey claims that changes in brain activity suggest that images of women in typically sexualised poses and costumes can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon. The part of the brain which deals with technology is turned on, and the part which enables empathy is turned off - which is not the same as 'attraction' - a conclusion which the tabloid twerps have been typically quick to jump to. The American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual conference was told that the experiments showed that sexy images lead men to think of women as 'less than human'. In other words, that sexual 'objectification' is a reality, and not the PC Gone Mad of media paranoia.
Even more confirmation, if it were needed, of what every feminist since Mary Woolestonecraft has been saying and the producers of 'Weird Science' knew already. Namely, that the use of sex for political and commercial purposes is always going to be a tactic to dehumanise women, and that it will take a constant process of education and radical cultural reformation to overcome it. And that ther is a vast amount of money to be made from exploiting that primal reflex in men.

"The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force. Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives."

'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'

An interesting feminist response comes from Feministing.

Simply taking naked women out of the picture (figuratively and literally) is not going to resolve the problem, and implying that "men can't help it" will just be used to contribute to the same sexist customs and rape culture that we're fighting against.

But it missses the point. Mere nakedness does not create the kind of objectifying, stereotyping, dehumanising effects which the research is talking about. It is as different as objectification is from genuine attraction. Nudist camps? I rest my case.
Commercialised sex, driven by commercial pornography, is a rape culture, and rape is not sex, but the exercise of power, as every feminist also knows.

Fiske explained that the areas, the premotor cortex and posterior middle temporal gyrus, typically light up when one anticipates using tools, like a screwdriver. "I’m not saying that they literally think these photographs of women are photographs of tools per se, or photographs of non-humans, but what the brain imaging data allow us to do is to look at it as scientific metaphor. That is, they are reacting to these photographs as people react to objects."

Fisk also tested the men for levels of sexism and found a surprising effect those who scored high on this test, "...the hostile sexists were likely to deactivate the part of the brain that thinks about other people's intentions. The lack of activation of this social cognition area is really odd, because it hardly ever happens. It’s a very reliable effect, that the medial prefrontal cortex comes online when people think about other people, see pictures of them, imagine other people."

Scientific American

The debate this report provokes will at least air some home truths about the mind-bending pornography we routinely plaster all over our field of view, and enable more people to see it for what it is, and be able to overcome it.

RALLY & MARCH: STOP THE GAZA MASSACRE.

STOP THE WAR COALITION
Email office@stopwar.org.uk
T: 020 7278 6694
Web: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

LONDON RALLY: THURSDAY 8 JANUARY

WITH TONY BENN, TARIQ ALI AND GEORGE GALLOWAY MP
7.30 PM
FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE
EUSTON RD, LONDON NW1 2BJ

Map:
http://tinyurl.com/7r9ez5.
Nearest tube: Euston.

SPEAKERS:
Tariq Ali , Tony Benn, George Galloway MP, Lindsey German (Stop the War), Sally Hunt (UCU), Hugh Lanning, Jeremy Corbyn MP, British Muslim Initiative speaker, Palestinian speaker.

650 killed. Over 3000 injured. Nowhere in Gaza is safe as Israel bombs schools, ambulances, mosques and residential tower blocks. No electricity, half the country with no water, food very scarce, hospitals unable to cope with the consequences of Israel’s barbarity, severe shortage of
medical supplies – a London Rally calling for this massacre to stop now has been organised by Stop the War and Palestine solidarity campaign on Thursday 8 January, at 7.30 pm.

If you live in the London area come and here Tony Benn, Tariq Ali, George Galloway MP and other speakers voice their anger and outrage over Israel’s war crimes and the collective punishment of Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza, and to discuss what we in Britain can do to help bring this carnage to an end.

***************************************
STEWARDS PLANNING MEETING

Prior to the London Rally, there will be a stewards planning meeting at 6pm in Friends Meeting House, Euston, for people who have volunteered to help us steward Saturday’s national demonstration in London. All stewards are urged to attend this planning meeting.

If you would like to help steward on Saturday, attend the stewards planning meeting or email your contact details to office@stopwar.org.uk or call 020 7278 6694.

STEWARDS PLANNING MEETING
THURSDAY 8 JANUARY 6.00 PM
FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE
EUSTON RD, LONDON NW1 2BJ
Map: http://tinyurl.com/7r9ez5. Nearest tube: Euston.

--------------------------------------------------------

1) THE GAZA KILLING FIELDS: DEMONSTRATE 10 JANUARY

NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION: SATURDAY 10 JANUARY
STOP THE MASSACRE : ISRAEL OUT OF GAZA
ASSEMBLE 12.30PM SPEAKERS CORNER,HYDE PARK
(Nearest tube Marble Arch) Rally & speakers in Hyde park

MARCH TO ISRAELI EMBASSY High St Kensington, London W8

Anyone with a shred of humanity who watches the video we feature below will do all they can to join the national
demonstration in London this Saturday 10 January, and will encourage everyone they know to be there too.

In the video a Norwegian doctor working in a Gaza hospital he calls "Dante's Inferno, hell", describes how Palestinians - particularly the children, who are 50 percent of the population - are dying and suffering horrific injuries for the crime of being civilians living in Gaza. "They cannot flee as other populations can in war time because Israel has them trapped in a cage," he says.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE http://www.stopwar.org.uk/ OR HERE
http://tinyurl.com/9d572c

Zionist Slaughter of Refugee Children

Reports coming through of scores of dead in a UN-run school in a refugee camp in Gaza. Zionist aoplogists will no doubt claim that they were terrorists, as they were killed. This is the Catch 22 logic which has now infested Zionism and, more worryingly, the rest of Israeli political ideology.

This was inevitable, especially since the IDF proved yesterday that it cannot even identify its own troops, let alone invisible terrorists. If it is unable to avoid targeting its own ground troops, how can it avoid targeting civilians in one of the most densely populated countries on earth. The entire Israeli propaganda front lies in ruins except to its apologists and dogmatists. It isn't just the lies and doublethink, but the flint-faced Israeli gloating which has outraged the clean world.

To use words like 'Nazi' about the perpetrators of these atrocities is not unreasonable. Zionism is merely another form of extreme nationalism, like national socialism and Those sensitive to the parallel should stick to using their calculators to check the numbers of the dead on each side, since their human emotions are uninstalled at present.

Meanwhile, in direct breach of the Geneva Treaty of 1980, the IDF has resorted to using phosphorus shells.

"These explosions are fantastic looking, and produce a great deal of smoke that blinds the enemy so that our forces can move in," said one Israeli security expert.

$ex $ells - Kids Suffer

Two cheers to BBC's Panorama for reporting the sexual abuse of children by children, and for highlighting the increased sexualisation of children by the media, and also for pointing out the role of sexual abuse as a means of domination - rather than the 'natural overflowing of suppressed adolescent sexual tension'. Or however else that excuse for violence is phrased.

Michelle Elliot, from the anti-bullying charity Kidscape, says that "sexual bullying has almost become a way of asserting your power over others and for that reason it is disturbing".

Responsibly, Panorama did did not try to lay the blame for this form of abuse, or the responsibility for its prevention, at the door of parents. But typically, it did not examine the commercialisation of sex. The fact that without using sex to sell everything from soap to nukes, there would be comparatively little of it in the media for children to be exposed to, and neither would their notion of what sex is be as perverted by competitive values as it now so clearly is.
Last Spring, I was shocked to hear that my little nephew had been exposed to pornographic images on another child's mobile phone in his rather proper little school in the depths of Wales. He was 7. His parents carefully explained as much as they could, and he does not seem to have forgotten about the whole thing. But constant exposure of children to this kind of poison cannot be tolerated.
Apparently though, the media are very prepared to tolerate the the blatant exploitation of children for sexual purposes in countries like Thailand, as long as it is camouflaged within the influential tourist industry, which buys lots of advertising space.
And to its shame, the BBC inadvertently condoned this same commodification in the way it exploited Vietnam in its recent 'Top Gear Special'. That programme depicted Vietnam as the next Thailand. A land of mystical scenery and friendly locals where made-to-measure silk suits could be bought for peanuts. Where every whim of the westener could be catered for.
And mention this fact on the messageboard of a supposedly liberal media organisation like the Guardian, and you are likely to be censored for your trouble.
It seems that it it not merely tories who have problems with freedom of speech.

Wedgewood Goes To Pot

Waterford Wedgewood has suspended its stock units from trading on the Irish Stock Exchange after going into receivership.
For the company originally founded by Josiah Wedgewood to now suffer the consequences of Consumerism is indeed another cycle completed. Wedgewood was one of the founders of industrial Britian. The Henry Ford of his day, and just as crucial to the history of mass production. Perhaps the fact that, unlike Henry Ford, he managed to retain some degree of social responsibility planted a humanitarian flaw in the company which eventually caused its downfall - but since the company founded by the disgusting animal Ford would have died last month without the Nanny State, it would seem that Consumerism might not always favour the ruthless and unscrupululous after all.

The Fraud of Tory Free Speech

Prominent, vastly over-rated and over-sponsored tory boy-blogger Iain Dale threatened to ban me from his blog today.

'I have no hesitation in calling you an anti semitic racist. You could be nothing else judging by your use of Lebensraum and Master race when talking about Israel. Any further such comments will result in a ban."

The braindead con of calling all anti-zionists anti-semites again? 'All Anti-Racists Are Racists'.
This proves that tory pretence to free speech is nothing but a giant fraud. But also completely undermines the over-exposed bag of hot air which is 'Iain Dale's Diary.' His petulance reinforces everything every thinking person knows about the tory mentality.
Zionists do not represent Judaism, but merely a fascistic set of territorial demands derived from a mythical golden age and authenticated by a divine entity. Just like the Nazis and every other form of extreme nationalism. Most Jews are revolted by their reactionary cruelty. And even religious fundamentalists are examining the religious credentials of the creed.
 Dale's threats of censorship are typical of the bogus claims to libertarianism of the right wing. As bogus as Zionist claims that 'there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza', or that they are able to 'target' terrorists in one of the the densely populated states on earth. But what else can we expect from someone subsidised by Israel?
Ban me from a tory hate sheet? It won't be the first time, and I'd consider it a privilege.
He pathetically squeals that Gaza is less densely populated than Portsmouth. As if that made any difference, or was an excuse for murderous nationalism such as Zionism. Which has proved to be just as toxic a fantasy as Nazism, Jihad, Greater Serbia, and the Irish Hall Of Kings. Cramming all the world's Jews into land occupied by generations of Palestinians was always an illogical and impossible objective, which is why it is now the most illegal state on the planet in terms of UN resolutions and requires massive subsidies from the US to exist at all.
It is clear that to Dale, a vengeance rate of 100 to one is quite acceptable to maintain this nightmare. This is a moral and intellectual surrender on a grand scale. But since when do tories have morals? There's simply no money in morals. Ask any of them to name an industrial dispute in which the workers were right to take action against their owners. There will be a long silence because tory dogma holds that the Boss always knows best.

But it seems that not all Tories are like the dreary Dale in every respect.
Israel has Gone Too Far and Will Pay a Heavy Price

Vince Cable Calls For Banking Strike To Be Broken

Spectator Award Winner Vince Cable, the British politician most widely respected for his Crunch-Awareness has finally woken up to the stark truth of the Banking Strike, and called for it to be broken. A bit late in the day, true, and over three months behind even this blog, but not bad for a liberal democrat.
It is high time that the business of providing credit was removed from short term market pressures and delivered in a rational manner. Those who distribute capital have no more right to expect to be showered in wealth than a doctor or fireman.

bank strike

The BBC Spits In The Face of Vietnam

The BBC's Top Gear proudly announces its Xmas Special - another expensive jolly holiday for Jezza & Co, on which they can sneer at the natives and admire the sunsets while playing schoolboy tricks on each other for the amusement of the backpacking and sex-tourist audience.
We wait 30 years for a decent TV documentary on Vietnam, and then none comes along all at once. What a responsible team of journalists could have done with the budget of this obscene farce we will never know. Perhaps the BBC might now consider a proper documentary on this ravaged country, unless, of course, the Americans might get annoyed and kick up a fuss.
Like almost every inch of film shot about Vietnam, this merely served the needs of its one time aggressors. Vietnam is there for our amusement. Another potential Thailand. A mecca for sex-tourists and other consumer perverts - as defended by the popular press in thios country, including even the likes of the Guardian, if the posts allowed on their obscene messageboards are anything to go by.
At best, western media coverage of Vietnam is merely a way of mourning Western losses. So far the BBC has never had the guts to tackle the question of Vietnam from the point of view of the Vietnamese and broadcast it at a time and on a channel where it will be seen. A half hour report at 3am on the World Service will not do.

'Dear Tehran, Please Build Nuclear Bombs.' Yours, Israel.

It is one of the worst jokes of history that the Zionist objective has always been to make Lebensraum for its biblically sanctioned Master Race. The current butchery by the Israeli F16s against the home made fireworks of Hamas is delivering a vengeance ratio of 1/100 on the Gazan ghetto, and is therefore raising the stakes to nuclear levels. This ratio is the kind of vengeance extorted by the Nazis against the resistance they met in the countries they occupied and terrorised. Or the Americans in Vietnam, for that matter. No doubt the Israelis learned their tactics from their bigger brothers.
As in the massacre of Lebanon, this has not only secured even more support for Hamas among the desperate Gazan population which elected them in the first place, but has also brought nuclear war in the middle east another step closer. The idea being to provoke WMD development in Iran, and a 'justified' pre-emptive strike with US backing.
Again, it remains to be seen whether the new US regime is merely another liberal paper tiger, or whether it can take a hard line with Israel in the name of humanity and justice.
Luckily, Zionism is not Judaism, and even luckier, most Jews are not Zionists.
The failure of Zionism to acknowledge the right of the Palestinians to a homeland exposes their hypocrisy, and their actions exposes them as nothing better than murderers. If they are ever to gain any moral credibility over their fanatical Islamic counterparts, they will have to act less like the Nazis who created them. They have to stop being terrorists, and start acting like a civilised state. If Britain had reacted against the IRA attacks of the 1970's with a tenth of the obscene, insane, brutal vengeance of Israel, we would still be counting the dead every month.

As MJ Rosenberg, Director of Israel Policy Forum's Washington Policy Centre says:

'But one thing is certain--this war is unlikely to bring peace any closer. In fact, I believe that the pictures Arabs and Muslims worldwide are seeing of the attacks on Gaza may push that day so far into the future that none of us will see it.

'Meanwhile, Israel's role in the emergence of Hamas is conveniently forgotten.

"Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel 'aided Hamas directly – the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),' said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic [and International] Studies. Israel's support for Hamas 'was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,' said a former senior CIA official."

Pope Adolf's Xmas Hate Message

Humanity is doomed by the spreading evil of Homosexuality. This work of Satan is slashing European birth rates and, since we are all living longer, Benedict the Batty reasons that Mankind is 'dying'. He would prefer African birth rates and, presumably, African life-expectancy.
This is all wrapped up in a monstrous jumble of pseudo-scientific bullshit about the organic nature of male and female and something called 'the ecology of Man' which he just invented, and is as chillingly reminiscent of Hitler's brand of nature-worship as this speech is of Hitler's terror and treatment of homosexuals. It refuses to accept sex without reproduction, thereby poisoning any pleasure with the bill of pregnancy, and in turn poisoning the connection between the person and their body, claiming ownership of it for Divine purposes which must not be denied. Controlling sexuality is a deeply effective means of mind control. As utterly evil and spiritually vandalistic as the notion, common to most religions, that love can be demanded with threats of eternal punishment.
The end product of this new attack on homosexuality is the same as ever, to serve the ancient Vatican need to keep women tied to the birthbed and the kitchen, devoting their energies to the glory of god, which is the highest calling a woman can aspire to...etc etc. While men are reduced to either toiling peasants or Mediterranean chancers, idling their lives away in a fug of local cheap alcohol and petty political feuding. The fact that persecution also cripples the emotional growth of millions of gays and lesbians, producing mopnsters such as Peter Sutcliffe, is just a bonus.
A society in which women did not do most of the work, and were able to contribute more fully to the improvement of the societies they lived in would be one which was able to draw on a much wider range of talent and experience and sheer intelligence. The cream of all society, not the cream of half. And such a society would be much more likely to eradicate the primitive standards of living which keep driving people into religious belief.
And so the Vatican must desperately stoke the level of hate and confusion, no matter how ridiculous is makes itself look. Politically, it has no choice if it to retain its African congregation. But what business is it of the Pope's to interfere in the political and economic choice to have children? Or veto the European text intended for the United Nations aimed at de-criminalising homosexuality - as it did last week? His priests are supposed to be celibate, and he has enough trouble enforcing that ruling. So what hope does he stand with normal people such as Tony Blair (to be seasonally charitable)?
As a Catholic who has recently come out of the closet, does Tony Blair agree that homosexuality is evil and is causing the death of humanity? How did he work so closely with Peter Mandelson all those years, and how will he look him in the eyes again? Does he agree that Britian needs to increase its birth rate to African levels and that his wife should renounce her ambitions and produce more children? Hardly, and the same is true with the vast majority of catholics who have the choice of controlling the size of their families. So what Herr Joseph Ratzinger (alias Pope Benedict XVI) has done by declaring war on sexual pleasure is actually to further alienate the Vatican from its sheep.
At present, it seems very difficult to estimate exactly how much the Catholic church earns per year (mostly tax-free of course). Most estimates seem pathetically low for an organisatiuon as powerful, and the Vatican itself will not disclose. But however large the actual income, The Vatican and the Italian state have been shown the intruments of torture by the European Union, and are squealing very loudly indeed. No wonder. Without their scandalous subsidies by almost every taxpayer in the world, and its enforced indoctrination in schools, this Bronze Age Re-enactment Society would wither away to a rump of nerds in less than a generation - as would most of its competitors.
All that would be left would be for them and their deranged billionaire patrons, to buy an extinct volcanic island in the Pacific, create their shared temple in the magma chamber, and leave the Humanity to get on with the business of human needs rather than meeting the exorbitant costs of maintaining the global Jurassic Park which is religious faith.

'N'- word Sighting In School

A ten year old boy was called a ‘n***er’ several times by a classmate. The teacher responded by makimg him read the poem 'Niggah' in front of the class.
“I was completely dumbfounded after my son told me that he was made to recite a poem called ‘Niggah’ in front of his class. The boy was then subjected to further humiliation after his teacher, questioned him as to

"why black people could used the word ‘n***er’ and white people could not.”

Louis Armstrong's account of his relationship with his manager Joe Glaser is interesting. After Armstrong he had made his name in Chicago and New York, mobsters were facing up to own him. There was a real risk that he would be hurt, and so he chose a manager with enough muscle to protect him, and paid him very handsomely. Armstrong put it this way.

"I needed him because everywhere we went he could say 'That's my nigger.' And I was OK."

That is the heritage which gives the word its particular poison, and the reason why it is being turned inside out and pointed back at the people who invented it by a new generation of black people. The message to white people is 'we have reclaimed this word for ourselves, and we can use it when you can't.'
That's all. It is a minor act of petty linguistic theft, in part to make up for the appalling crimes of history. In part to annoy. The fact that it's 'not fair' is the whole point. So there isn’t any hypocrisy, as the teacher in this case implies, merely a chance taken to make white people feel uncomfortable. This new street usage may not be a productive or rational tactic, and many black leaders condemn it. But it probably feels good.
And another thing. Its' use requires consent, which requires contact and communication. In other words, you need to have some form of relationship with the recipient before using it. This again reinforces a sense of identity and kinship and places the emphasis on human contact.. And who can argue with that in a society in which the sense of community is all but dead?
A world in which a black person gave a white person permission to call him a nigger, would be a world without racism.
When Barack Obama uses it, something will have changed.

'They Call Me MISTER Nigger!'

The Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors Makeover Show

The Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors urges the government to fund the renovation of empty properties to house local authority waiting lists.

So all the time we were borrowing to build new houses, there were thousands lying empty.
This is the benign market working intelligently, again.
Shame a few more of these homes couldn't have been renovated in the last ten years to reduce the amount of dodgy debt, and perhaps mitigate the crash we've just experienced. Even better, councils could have been allowed to spend some of their Right To Buy cash on building new stock, which would have provided rented accomodation for those who cared more about living than about their place on the 'property ladder'. That would have reduced the scramble for credit too, and softeneed the recent bump. But all that would have taken politicians with some guts and ideas.
The RICS can't say they didn't warn us 12 months ago.

"The warning is just one of the "priority" risks it has identified for the next 18 months. The others include customers losing confidence in another financial firm, in the way they did with Northern Rock; concerns about the business models of some banks since the credit markets tightened; and a potential increase in finance crime caused by the downturn."

Shame they didn't make the same recommendations then that they are making now.

Jeremy Clarkson. This Year's Hitler.

Since the uninvited assistance from 'Godwin's Law' it is now an internet taboo to refer to Hitler and the Nazis as epitomies of Evil and a world gone mad - which was the one benefit of their legacy. So someone else had to fill the rhetorical gap. Step forward Jeremy Clarkson - the arrogant, feckless, petrified adolescent who has managed to make himself a symbol of all that's wrong with a society sticking its head in the sand over its responsibilities to future generations of people. It's a lousy job, but someone has to do it, and Clarkson will do fine. He won't mind.
It's a good thing that, unlike Hitler, Clarkson is not a real person. But nevertheless, how he, and his armies of disciples, will cope with the death of the car industry is still matter of real concern. The millions of addicts to petro-porn who tune in every day to Top Gear on BBC or Dave will notice that their regular fix isn't hitting the spot as it used to. It will be cut with more and more low-octane features on diesel and hybrids and convoying technology, when what they want is a big red Fasterati Fallus Stigging through 'Hammerhead' on its way to a record time which Little Big Teeth won't be able to stick at the top of the table.
With hilarious consequences.
Top Gear has drooled over the possibilities of hydrogen power for a while. James May insists over and over that the technology is clean and harmless and fun and fast. 'All it produces is water'.
Unfortunately, he doesn't tend to talk about the carbon cost of producing the hydrogen fuel in the first place. Which leaves our credulous petrolheads imagining a future which is reassuringly the same as today, only without the guilt. When they finally begin to realise the damage done by the car to the cities it now owns, and the lives of the generations forced off the streeets and into their bedrooms in front of their fattening screens, they might realise that there is still some damage which the hydrogen cell will not cure. Carbonisation is not the only crime of the car.
And as any viable hydrogen car is still at least a decade away from mass production, it is all a bit academic. It will be too late by then for the car industry to retool itself to undo much of the environmental damage it has already caused.

Car Industry Dies Intestate

As the The The implosion of the global auto-motive industry continues, Vauxhall workers at Ellesmere Port have just been offered a degree of job security in exchange for a layoff at 30% pay. This is a grim echo of Bruce Forsyth's incredible 1968 propaganda single 'I'm Backing Britain', which urged patriotic Britons to work for nothing.
The demands of market economics on the industry, forcing it to produce ever more conspicuously wasteful models, have proved too much. As profit-making businesses, they are now almost worthless. Their immense investment in machinery and property is just so much scrap iron. The only asset which now matters is the workforce, and the lives which depend on it, including those dependent on the huge small business sector which would die if the car production line workforce stopped spending.

So the duty of the state is to the people, not the corporations, whose custody of the economy has proved to be a mistake. So before the proposal even arises - why should the state buy defunct car companies? They are worth nothing except the people who kept them working, so by any common law morality, the asset reverts to the ownership of society - the people. The short-termism of the corporations hasn't worked, they've had they chance and they blew it. In effect, the car industry has died without leaving a will. Its estate would, in a family situation, revert to the next of kin; in this case, the workers as represented by the state. Its assets are now the state's. Its workforce was only ever rented out anyway.

The industry wants the state to sponsor it through what it sees as 'hard times'. So that it can keep as many people in work until the 'good times' return, as they surely must.Then, they can carry on much as before. Not this time. A future auto-motive industry has to try its best to set back the clock and make the sort of machines they should have started making at least ten years ago. Ironically enough, Formula One racing has finally decided to provide an incentive to efficiency in their sport by barring refuelling from 2010 - one of several measures forced on F1 by the Crash. Perhaps this represents a start to whatever it is that Barack Obama is proposing, and whatever the common sense demands of the future dictate.

Bernard Madoff With $50 Billion.

Former Nasdaq stock chairman Bernard Madoff has had it away on his toes with 50 billion big ones from accounts of New York's rich and gullible - the FBI alleges after allegedly hearing a confession from the 70 year old. It is the largest investor swindle ever blamed on a single individual.
At any other time, this would seem exceptional. But now it just seems like more dust from under the rug. And this on the same day that U.S. republicans refused to bail out the car industry for roughly the same amount. If that provides any sense of scale.
The millions of jobs on the one hand, and one man's avarice on the other. There may well be no direct relationship in that an honest Bernard Madoff would still see Detroit in the sewer, but as an example of the entrepreneurship versus society, it is a bit of a classic, happening when it does.
This is a vast scandal of Albanian crudeness which suckered the most the most sophisticated clients on the planet - allegedly - and was only uncovered becaus the market crashed. So how many other squalid pyramid cons and other frauds can we expect to see emerge over the next few months? Who will be found to be wearing trunks when the tide finally goes out?
And will someone please explain the moral and legal differences between these illegal activites and those of Our Friends in organised crime? This sounds very organised, and very profitable. More so, possibly, than even the Mafia's drug market in the US. Who knows?
What is the difference between Capitalists and Gangsters? The public are less and less clear about which thieves are respectable and which are despicable. And that is a very dangerous situation indeed.
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Christmas Eve Extra.
Victim of Madoff swindle slashes wrists.

In Praise of the Amish

One of the biggest worries of religious believers seems to be that they fear mockery. Which doesn't display much depth of faith, to be honest.
On a recent routine God Vs Science internet dead end, one believer was urged to defend (and express) his religion through the recommended medium of prayer for the welfare of the unholy. Which seemed totally in keeping with the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, as I remember it. His first reaction was:

jobi258 - 04:34am Dec 12, 2008 GMT (#406 of 420)
'I would be happy to pray for you, but if I was to do so, wouldn't you just laugh at me and ridicule my prayers?'

Why should we? It's a perfectly serious solution, seeing as the biggest worry non-believers have about religion is how it relates to the physical world, not the metaphysical.
The biggest threat to religious faith doesn't come from atheists putting the mockers on, but from its political exploitation and the mobilisation of its believers. That not only increases tension between religions and between the religious and non-religious, but also insults religion itself. Political activism is not religious. But naturally, religions can fuel political action. Nowadays they do little else.
I don't notice the Aimish, for instance, complaining of being persecuted or having their rights abused or being offended by contraventions of their own code. And this doesn't mean they don't have fun. I was once privileged to sit on the next table to a bevy of teenage Aimish girls on a night out at the local village community centre in Kent, watching a performance by a travelling flamenco company retailing some of the sexiest dance and music in the world. They absorbed it with every appearance of relish and applauded as wildly as all the other villagers.
They seem to see the world through genuinely faithful eyes, with its sins and stupidities as a total and utter irrelevance compared with the immensity and perfect bliss of eternity. And therefore the scurryings and pettiness of wars and depressions must seem a bit pathetic and pointless to them. 'They also serve who only stand and wait.' And that must be a nice way to live. They mean it, and they keep their noses clean.
They don't presume to judge for god. As Karen in 'Outnumbered' says:

'God could blow up the planes Himself, if that's what he wanted..'

The Muddled Middle Class Who Don't Know What They Are

It seems the bewildered casualties of the post-Tatcher education system still believe that class means talking proper and not naming your children after brands of champagne. People who still need to ask:

'Are there such things as upper, middle and working class, or whatever, culture, and, if so, what do they consist of, and does it matter?'.

Let's try explaining again how it works.
The bigger the factory you own, the more middle class you are. The less you control the means of your survival, the more working class you are.
So a collier's factory. his capital, are his muscles and his pick, if lucky. He is therefore more middle class than someone who only 'owns' his muscles. It is the sum of his capital assets which can be used to directly create productive work. His pick is his production line and distribution system in one. His 'factory's' orders for labour come from the mine owner, just as his orders for coal come from the wholesalers and the market forces beyond.

But the miner is less middle class than the grocer who sells him his food from his own shop, however modest. He is also less middle class than the tradesman with a highly marketable skill (and his own tools, ideally) who has a lot of time invested in learning his trade. A lawyer is a tradesman, what makes him more middle class than a carpenter is his clientelle - and the fact that like most of the so-called 'professional classes'* he is also paid to tell lies.
The bigger the capital investment, the more insulated the individual from the whims of the market, and the higher up the social scale the individual progresses. The less the individual can invest, the less he 'has to show' for his work, the more he is vulnerable to the needs of others, and the more he needs to work with others to defend what few rights he does enjoy and try to secure whatever advances for his class are achievable.
And so on and so forth, Mr Rockefeller. Surely even trained journalists at the Sun could understand that, inasmuch as they can read, that is.
How depressing after more than a century of state education and one of the most dramatic, publicised and illuminating economic crashes of all time to still have to explain that money means power, and that the strong are more powerful than the weak. I blame the parents.

* 'The Professions' - as in a specialist craft or skill which often comes with a uniform and often consists of being 'economical with the truth'.
Lawyers, the clergy, the military, politicians, the press, and even doctors.

Boris Johnson LaLaLaLaLa!

The man is cracking up. Asked to make a statement on his latest bungled appointment, which again revealed his infantile grasp of political reality, his panicked flight from baffled BBC man Tim Donovan must have sent shivers down the spine of every Londoner aware that the world is watching.

• BJ: ‘Hi matey how are you how are you I’m going going whatever it is I’m not going to tell you now no no no no no’
• Reporter: ‘What are you going to do about David Ross?’
• BJ: ‘Nothing nothing nothing nothing la la la la bye bye bye’
• Reporter: ‘Have you got no comment about David Ross?’
• BJ: ‘I’ve got no comment now, thank you’
• Reporter: ‘If his conduct’s… not good enough for the city, is it good enough for you?’
• BJ : la la la la

And then he vanished in a huge blonde huff, trailing clouds of buffonery in his wake. I hope he managed to regather his morale at yesterday's PMQ's when the tories almost hyenaed themselves into a collective hernia at Gordon Brown's hilarious slip of the tongue: 'He said he rescued the world'! Oh how they laughed. They still seem to be good at cheering themselves up at the slighest provocation, at least. Good to know the tories have lost none of their incompetence or their public school sense of humour. With all the employment to come, they will be very busy, and very merry.
Boris Johnson only needs the beard to get a really fulfilling job. I'm sure Mohamed 'Al' Fayed could help. Ho Ho Ho.