Thought for the day: Life is nature's way of delaying death.

Facebook: making sure you never lose touch with people you don't like.

Internal admin is not "industry".

Flying on a wing and a prayer may sometimes be necessary. Taking off on the same is another matter entirely.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Perpetual Motion: a celebration of modern economics

And it would come to pass that one day, efficiency reigned. Everything and everyone would be the same for ever. Everybody would wear the same clothes, eat the same calorie-controlled diet and work for the same company. There would be one company. Everybody would have seven hobbies. There would be only seven hobbies to have. They would be job descriptions. Everybody would share the same modes of transport and travel the same distance every month. Vacations were part of peoples' occupations, as were redundancies. Hardship and wealth had become optimised as agents of progress. Progress had been driven by necessity. Stability had been the goal and stability had been attained. There would be no more need for change, only growth. Only a few individuals would grow. They would harvest any excess without impediment. This had been proven to be necessary.

Everybody worked all the time. Everybody would serve and everybody would be served equal amounts of everything. There would be no inequality and everybody would treat everybody else identically. There would be no prejudice or discrimination.

Everyone would use the same money and the same bank. There would be one bank. They would use the same shop for everything.  There would be one shop. All branches would be located by strict demographic measurements and proven management techniques and sized accordingly. They would stock exactly the same produce at exactly the same prices. Each outlet would employ the same amount of women and men. All purchases were driven by compulsion. There would be no need for enforcement of anything, ever. Everybody would know their place.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Public announcement

We apologise for the interruption of service. Normal services shall resume at some time in an increasingly tenuous looking future. In the meantime, some music...........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxaY_mxYflg

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Severe weather forecasts expected for Highlands

The first signs of turbulence appeared last Monday when a couple of perfectly innocent meteorologists were overheard discussing a large weather system forming in the Caribbean. By Tuesday, an area of low pressure at news desks developed and it was clear that a massive storm of hysteria was heading our way. By Wednesday, it had reached Category 2 on the Saffir-Simpson scale when some guy whose best mate knew a journalist's brother got hold of the information, grasping little of it. By this time it had downgraded from category 5, real devastation in the Caribbean to uncut, grade A manufactured codswallop which was then cut to one part fact to ten parts untethered speculation and sold on for public consumption with predictable consequences.

This being the UK, the media were prophesying something of biblical proportions, and they may well have been right; it was, after all, largely untrue and grew in the telling with all real meaning being lost.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Of motes and beams

Jim Devine, the former Labour M.P., has just been released from jail after serving 4 months of a 16 month sentence for expenses fraud to a feeding frenzy of righteous indignation. Incumbent members are on holiday and generally unavailable for comment. Brazen editorialising has paraded as straight news, spraying cold-filtered opprobrium with gay abandon and no inferable sense of irony.

Now, some might think it reasonable to say, on the basis of what they have learned, seen and heard of the man, that he would not be one’s first choice to be stuck in a lift with for any length of time. That monotone Lanarkshire brogue, despite being perfectly intelligible to anybody who can see their way to leaving a few prejudices at home for a minute is, nevertheless, for dialect connoisseurs and collectors only.

By way of a motif, it might be worth considering something obvious, something that can usefully withstand repetition now and again; Jim Devine was voted into office. In a democracy, this in itself has to carry weight, even if it is dead weight. Chip away at this and you effectively over-rule a plebiscite and a rapidly widening wedge will sense an opportunity.

Monday, August 1, 2011

A taxing question

Norman Lamont, a.k.a. Baron Lamont of Lerwick, a man famous for his inability to pronounce his own name (ask any Lamont, particularly of the Shetland strain - the stress is on the first syllable) has called for a reduction of the maximum income tax rate from 50% to 40% for poor souls struggling on £150K a year.

This is the man whose political career was distinguished only by his far from illustrious tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, during which he oversaw fiscal miracles such as Black Wednesday, when George Soros famously made a billion pounds in one day and Britain’s ignominious exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, events which helped push Britain into recession.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Financial news

The New York stock exchange is presently unperturbed by the possibility of the U.S., the biggest economy on Earth, defaulting on its debts. Investors are said to be confident and this is reflected in the Dow Jones index. Everybody is happy. More follows....................

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Olympics special

It is now only one year until the opening ceremnony of the London Olympics which are exactly one year away in a year's time this time next year. Thought you ought to know this.

Adjust William

Enoch Powell famously said that all political careers end in failure. If the old buzzard was still with us, I can imagine a post-script noting that many now begin so. It is always dangerous to look back with too much uncritical fondness at political figures from the recent, readily recalled past, especially so with the likes of dear old Enoch, who was a bit of a card at times, but this shouldn’t bar us from appreciating the techniques they used and the skill with which complex ideas were distilled and transmitted in finely crafted paragraphs. The sheer vapidity of the vast bulk of political debate at U.K. level today is starkly highlighted when listening to some of the acknowledged masters of the post war era. Sceptics can look to the early days of televised parliament for positive identification of that now almost extinct species. A few linger, but they are old, elusive and seldom heard.

It should be a matter of national regret that the age of the great parliamentarian has gone and that public speakers of Powell’s calibre are not around to tears strips off the gormless lobby fodder now clogging Westminster’s benches. The role has now become so homogenised and commodified, we now have standard issue politicians: a 2/2 from Oxbridge in Politics, Philosophy and Economics with work experience as an adviser to somebody slightly further up the same hermetically sealed food chain is now widely considered to be sufficient qualification to run the country. Miliband, Cameron and their respective tribes clearly accept this orthodoxy and the frightening thing is that nobody seems to be challenging it except a few wizened old refusniks forever banished to the political hinterlands. It suits the markets, mind, so nothing worry about..........

Monday, July 25, 2011

Spot the self-referring paradox: Number 2651

From the BBC News website today:

Nick Martin
writes on our Facebook wall "At least the Norwegians have had the sense to try this guy behind closed doors and not give him the publicity he craves".

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Bargain basement bribery

There are more than a few aspects of the conflagration presently engulfing the Murdoch empire and the Metropolitan Police that don’t stack up, notwithstanding  what seems to be the inescapable truth that this all goes far higher, lower and wider than at first imagined. David Cameron has never convinced as a politician, even with the patronage of a beneficent Murdoch press, but he looks decidedly shaky now, appearing to be playing double-or-quits with his political survival.

Conspiracy theorists must be worried that they too are facing redundancy as it is hard to even imagine why he should appear so nervous and unsure, unless of course he’s so familiar with wrongdoing that he is merely trying to figure out which particular unnatural act is actually implicated. He either knows nothing at all, in which case we should ask what the hell he thinks he’s doing in Number 10, or he’s been a very naughty boy. Sadly, he is an honest chap and I believe he is sincere when he admits to being too uninteresting and shallow for honest-to-goodness corruption.

Murdoch: Custard Pie Horror

Breaking news.....

Rupert and James Murdoch were said to be shocked last night when, despite high security and with the eyes of the world watching, a man described only as "a banker" calmly marched in on proceedings and shoved a £14 billion bonus in the public's face. 

The Empire Strikes Out

Dear Rupe.......You don't mind if I call you Rupe, Rupe? No? Good. Very humbling for me too. There're a few questions I'd like to ask you. Where to start, eh? I mean, we go back years. So much has changed, but you haven't. You're still the same venal, mercenary, soul-less philistine you were as a boy. And, just as in your youth, you confuse friendship with bondage and see financial transactions as acts of love, no matter how perverse. Such is your currency, which I suppose makes you a (deleted for legal reasons). All well and good, but you broke house rules and the safety word has changed and it's not "humble". This is what you get for taking the piss.

All you've done is refine your profound personality flaws and one-dimensional conceit into weapons using the artifice of business. And guess what, Rupe? It's all as real as a Restoration Comedy and the curtain's staying up. By rights, you should be lucky if you can have a dump in private. Your slimy tendrils saw to it that many thousands would endure just this for far lesser sins.

By way of a starting point - there are so many - I'd like to ask about a couple of comments you made to the Commons select committee yesterday. In response to suggestions that your company suffered endemic corruption, you said, "Endemic is a very hard, a very wide-ranging word". It is indeed. You continued, "That that has been disclosed, I became aware of as it became apparent." One would have hoped that you did.

Oh, another thing. Just in case you thought differently for one fucking minute, whether or not you "agree to be interrogated" or are "more than happy" or otherwise to do so is immaterial. Given that you are getting on a bit, time is of the essence and we really do want to help you in any way we can to reminisce on the old days. We wouldn't want you snuffing it now, would we? Just think of all the hard work taken to reach this moment. Rupert, if needs be, I'll donate a kidney just to see you hang.

I promise we won't get bored, even with the tedious little details about who signed off the cheques and to whom and how you pimped successive Prime Ministers into dismal acquiesence to the forces of organised kleptocracy. And just to pre-empt you, you're dead right, sport, this does all have the carnival atmosphere of a lynching to it.

More follows......

Monday, July 18, 2011

Aye, but nothing............

Despite the arrests, resignations and a whirlwind of all-purpose, late-blooming outrage at the activities of those embroiled in the News Corps scandal, it is clear that there is still a lot of work to be done to detoxify the country from the pall of venality eminating from the Metropolitan Police and News International.

This is nowhere more evident than in the popular but lazy narrative which has it that the phone-hacking and bribery allegations presently circling News Corps like vultures  are simply an extension of the scandals that surrounded the banks and Westminster MPs' expenses. This is an agenda in no small way propagated and gleefully nourished by a media that has been slavishly following Murdoch's line simply to keep a market share. Even when taking issue with either his friends in big business or his media practices, he was setting the tenor of debate. Others sang in either harmony or discord, but Rupert & Son ran the rhythm section.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

The Times they are a Changin' Hands

Our reporters are watching this one closely and will bring you up to date with the latest intercepted messages, tales of nefarious behaviour and all round, perfidious ugliness just as soon as we scrape our jaws off the floor and stop laughing with undiluted joy.................... 

Reports are coming in that the Wicked Witch of Wapping has been formally arrested on appearing by appointment at a London police station. A shame really. Given some of the shit she's meted out to thousands of people over a long and ignominious career of unbridled spite and utter lack of human decency, I'd have preferred to see her being dragged screaming from her bed at five in the morning with the all the world's most mercenary papps present and correct, forewarned and fore-armed.

More follows..............

Friday, July 8, 2011

Armageddon special





WORLD TO CLOSE DOWN: breaking news with exclusive pictures!!!!!!!!! 
 
The universe yesterday (© Sky/ News Intergalactical)
The universe was rocked tonight by news that the once-popular planet, The World, is to be taken out of circulation after 4.5 billion years as a satellite of The Sun. In its heyday it was behind many sensational stories and set the agenda for other small deposits of utterly insignificant debris floating aimlessly near the asteroid belt. It was once famously recognised for the memorable and typically self-deprecating slogan, “all known life is there”.



It was perhaps most famous in recent centuries for shocking exposés such as the plagues of Egypt, brain-curdlingly awful daytime TV and for the prolonged periods in which it exercised total mind control over the planet's embarrassingly supine governments and alarmingly suggestible inhabitants, as well as its forensically detailed and grizzly experiment with brutalist realism, perhaps best exemplified in the infamous World War exclusives on which so many worked without fear or favour. 

Ian Hislop was too upset to speak (© Who cares?)
Long before all this, of course, there was that mind-boggling and arguably unrivalled stunt, the story that really made its name as the planet of choice for so many lower life-forms, the so-called natural selection scandal, involving absurdly large reptiles and massive, up-yours volcanoes, which some today still refuse to believe actually happened despite this being a story most other planets concur on and indeed covered extensively at the time. 

However, some World natives chose to rely for too long on undisprovable, intercepted messages from other dimensions, an activity endemic there and that was behind many of its most shocking misdemeanours and ultimately led to the catastrophic loss of direction that necessitated this final drastic solution. It is quite clear that this planet had been spinning unstoppably towards oblivion for considerably longer than the six and half thousand years, give or take, many of its inhabitants had claimed.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Heid the baw

I am delighted to report that the new Scottish government is seeking to set up a bespoke Scottish TV channel. I do hope, however, that the present model for Scottish news broadcasting is abandoned and that we might be treated to a more balanced news diet.
  
BBC's Reporting Scotland in particular is now simply a nightly football round-up with a couple of token items on quirky, niche subjects such as politics, health, the economy and the like. I have made my own sample study and have found that, on average, 15 minutes of each episode of R.S. consists of football news. Another 5 minutes is spent telling us what is coming up later in the programme, as if we are all on the edge of our seats and can't endure more than a few minutes suspense without soiling ourselves. UK news dispenses the same garbage, but with  better production techniques and an international dimension, however, packaging alone will never disguise the overwhelming stench of stool.

Football supporters are a well catered for minority and generally do not need a blow-by-blow account of the weekend's football results on a Monday. The suffering majority are not remotely interested in the minutiae of manager and player contracts, transfer agreements and minor players' even more minor injuries. The sheer presumptiousness of football is nowhere more manifest than at the daily press conferences held by clubs to announce utter trivia of significance to nobody other than themselves. 

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Credit where it's due

Listing the sins of this Westminster coalition is like housework; a depressing, never-ending chore enlivened only when one is required to stop and identify the new species taking root behind the fridge. But while the government set about cleaning up what they aver is a mess - some cynics say replacing it with a worse one - a glaring contradiction to their stated ideology stands out. It seems to defy a prime article of monetarist faith, the one which says public spending can only be a burden on wealth creation that merely encourages feckless dependency and deserves at least as much scrutiny as any nefarious prank involving sub-prime mortgages and collateralised debt.  

While the thousand cuts they are so gleefully inflicting are being readily identified and deconstructed by all and sundry, one astronomically expensive example of the dead hand of state interfering in people's lives, a Keynesian monster that, if doctrine were adhered to, would  be considered the work of a monolithic, statist, command economy, has received little or no attention. This despite, on the face of it, being meat and drink to neo-liberal market evangelists everywhere, namely, the bizarrely complicated and hugely expensive - about £18 billion - working tax credits system. This is doubly strange, what with its architect being one Gordon Brown, at whose door it is now customary to lay the blame for every catastrophe from the fall of man onwards.

Current political orthodoxy – if such indeed exists in a world where governance is increasingly regarded as little more than an adjunct of big commerce – has it that if Gordon Brown thought of something, it must by definition be a bad idea. Surely the Working Tax Credits system is the beast incarnate, the very embodiment of the redistributive, anti-free trade tyranny that business abhors and gives markets fits of the vapours? 


Monday, May 9, 2011

The State of the Union

Before the ink was even dry on the ballot papers, the losers of last week’s elections went into full panic mode and, as if as one, simultaneously unleashed a chorus of petulant screeching, demanding that an independence referendum be announced by dinner time and held by the end of the week. Their post-election comments were clearly written before an outright majority was considered a possibility as they sounded as if they thought they were speaking from a position of strength. Their media interface software was missing a crucial update, hence the compatibility issue between their imaginations and reality. The responses to events were as considered as those of a Venus flytrap, snapping at anything that disturbs their hair-triggers, unable to distinguish between a mosquito and an elephant. The snarling, hissing tenor of their argument is its own downfall as it amounts to accusing the electorate of being idiots who have no idea what's good for them and need protected from themselves. They kent wur faithers; we shouldnae get ideas ahead o' wursels.

Nothing can happen without a debate. What they quite wilfully fail to acknowledge is that the debate on independence has never been intelligently held in Scotland and, moreover, that this is largely because they themselves have consistently refused point blank to entertain it, as if to do so would be seen as dignifying some revolting slur. The idea of independence was beneath contempt. Nationalism was to be discussed only with held noses and closed eyes. For decades, defence of the Union amounted to "la la la, we can't hear you, la la la." They have to listen now.

The British Union’s track record on fighting on the back foot is not a good one. If they continue to behave as they have up until now, they’ll lose their argument as surely as they lost this election. Their main fear may well be that when they actually start to discuss the matter, there is a risk that a few of their own might go native. Many Scots previously entrenched in unionism have clearly bitten the bullet and done just this. It may be temporary and the massive swing to the SNP can't automatically be construed as popular demand for independence, but the unionists take the converse for granted at their peril. There are no defaults left in Scottish politics.  

To date, defenders of the union have treated the debate with such unthinking disdain that they don't even argue. They simply recite the same lines over and over, defending themselves rather than their case out of tribal instinct. They were not ready for this and they'll need to make this distinction soon if they are to stand a chance. Their contribution has not even served their own purposes: I think it would be fair to say that the return of a thumping SNP majority to Holyrood, contradicting the finely tuned mechanisms of their very own bespoke electoral system, probably goes down as both a failure of practise and a pronouncement on their stated purpose. If their practises change, their purposes might evolve. Who knows where they might end up?

Monday, April 18, 2011

The Year of Living Carelessly



As May approaches, we thought it would be fitting to look back at the first year of the Coalition government and calmly examine their achievements and popular sentiment towards these and discuss what, if anything, we intend to do to stop the country being blackmailed any further into bonded penury by an out of control financial sector and its placemen in Westminster. Today, our editor-in-chief offers his own personal analysis, verdict and none-too-subtle call for organised and widespread civil disobedience.


 
Like so very many people nowadays, I am feeling the pinch and sharing the pain in involuntary deference to a belief that this will help the nation's balance sheet. To demonstrate just how dedicated I am to my country and how keen I am to suffer for the nefarious pranks of the financial alchemists who somehow contrived to make half the wealth of the planet disappear overnight and then mysteriously reappear in their accounts, but only after we had made a similar deposit, as well as having to endure the squeeze on already limited household finances, I have a near belly-up small business that not that long ago was coming along quite nicely. Sadly, it depended on a healthy and confident economy for sustenance. 

Exactly how my livelihood evaporating overnight is helping the country's finances has not been explained to my satisfaction. I do hope that the Chancellor isn't making important calculations on the basis of any contribution I am likely to make to G.D.P. If my experiences in any way represent those of others in the private sector, any projections based on our ability to pay taxes and to fill the crater left by Coalition’s attack on the public realm will have to be fairly modest to be even remotely plausible.

Apparently my financial insecurity forms part of an engine of growth and my assets represent a liability. I have to change to accommodate their policies. Overnight, my life became superfluous. Not in the way the farrier’s did when the motor car finally replaced the horse, but because some gentlemen in the City decided that certain aspects of the state weren’t conducive to their own highly-refined interests and that perhaps a government whose cause the City alone supported with some £11m in donations, yea, over 50% of their election fund, might see their way to reciprocating this generosity by letting them snap up what remains of the public sector at a price of their choosing. Notice how neither the purpose nor, indeed, the need for public services has been challenged. What is being debated is who they are for and who should benefit from them. Somehow, adding a profit motive to an already financially stretched service is going to help matters all round. Many find this difficult to believe.  A few are finding it difficult to believe their luck. 

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Running on empty

I hear today that both Gaddafi's forces and the rebels are getting low on ammunition. I have also noticed since the beginning of this conflict that members of both sides like nothing more than firing thousands of rounds in the air in gestures of defiance towards their respective foes whenever a Western news team hoves into view.

I suggest that in order to expedite a cessation of hostilities, we do indeed put boots on the ground, in the shape of as many TV camera crews as we can muster and film each side relentlessly 24/7 until they run out completely. I might add that those prosecuting the present action should perhaps view such a satisfactory conclusion as instructive and fundamentally revise and amend the pertinent export policies with this in mind.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Reverting to type

Ah, well. We may still be mired in dirty and unnecessary wars, but at least we’re not facing the economic and social catastrophe of the 70s. Cue Homer Simpson in a Halloween Special: or are we?

Says a lot, really, a typeface called Creepy. Whata wasa thata, lady? Why sure! We gotta font forra everree occasion. Ay! Luigi! We gotta lady hera she wanta Penury in a 14!” That, believe it or not, is Informal Roman.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Applied Market Forces: first principles explained

It occurred to me that, what with Libya and all that, the bankers might think we've forgotten about them. We wouldn't want that, now, would we? Look what happened the last time the fog of war obscured them from the public gaze for too long. What naughty boys and girls they were. They would love nothing more than a good scrap with a real baddie, the better to resume looting unhindered. Good heavens! The media beanfeast over M.Ps' expenses provided sufficient cover for the biggest sting in history. A war? Really? Oh, we mustn't. We're spoiling them.

The bankers' jaw-dropping disingenuiety on the issue of their remuneration has now attained such Himalayan heights of intelligence insulting that we're all in danger of developing altitude sickness. With every swipe of the public credit card, our sensibilities recoil, our eyes glaze over to protect them and, do you know what? This is precisely what they want. As far as it goes, which isn't very far but, until we wake up, is as far as they need, their line of reasoning is sound enough, too; they are quite clearly getting exactly what they want with ruthless efficiency and nothing seems to stop them.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Age of Entitlement

A shorter version of this was edited, with a breadknife it would seem, and appeared in The Herald 19th March 

The current furores over pensions, both private and public sector, and higher education funding, more than in any of the other political debates of the day, distinguish themselves not in what is discussed, but in what studiously avoids being discussed.

As one who comes from the butt end of the baby boom, but who has no pension provision and who has been holed below the waterline by the brazenly ideologically-driven economic policies of the Coalition, I can not speak too lowly of the bankers and their stooges, Osbourne, Cameron and company, but there are others I look at more than slightly askance. While the present Westminster government may be dead wrong in more ways than one could point a firing squad at, my sympathy for students and pensioners matches that which I have for the self-immolating Lib Dems.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Product Placement News

The broadcasting watchdog Ofcom announced today that television dramas and documentaries that have been funded in any way by businesses in exchange for having their products appearing in the programmes must clearly display the new official Product Placement logo, pictured below, during both the opening and closing credits. 


The decision was welcomed by the Advertising Standards Authority, who for many years had been lobbying for regulation and transparency in what had hitherto been a grey area. 

The regulation covers all television programmes. From now on, when covering news from the Middle-east and North Africa, all news broadcasters will be obliged to use this revised map of the region.



Sunday, March 13, 2011

Ad Libya

Libyans; a rum lot, what? The people of that benighted land clearly show scant regard for script reading, that’s for sure. Why won’t they just walk like Egyptians? Since the  euphoria of the halcyon days of a few weeks ago, when our media platoons were all looking for trips abroad, the deafening sound of nothing happening has been ringing out from all points Mediterranean and Middle-eastern. From Morocco, Algeria and Bahrain? Silence. Syria, Iran and Jordan? Silence. Kuwait and Saudi? Silence, please. A lack of interesting footage has helped Tunisia and Egypt slip off the news agenda while they perform their own administrative Feng shui. The only revolutions occurring there seem to be in government building doorways.

In this land of ill-defined borders and disputed jurisdiction, the West, we have been all too readily swept along by our own media talking breathlessly of "revolutions brought about by Twitter and Facebook" - a pig ignorant conceit that has done  a few billionaires no harm at all - and predicting "a domino effect throughout the region" as if a logical sequence of events with a beginning, middle and happy ending was in train.

Worse still, shamefully duped by the myth of social networking as democracy in a cape sweeping in to oust the bad guys, young, desperate but naïve  North Africans got swept along too, believing that all they had to do was tweet and the formless notions of "change" they believed would bring them prosperity, the wish for which lies at the bottom of all this, would materialise overnight. Of the many examples of post-colonial bad faith in our portfolio, wilfully allowing these people to infer  that we would come to their aid when we had not the intention, the resources or the stomach to do so must count as the scum floating on an ocean of perfidy. All we have done is let our hyperactive media play Chinese whispers, encouraging fire-raising and letting the wind do the rest. If the smoke blows our way, we have only ourselves to blame.  

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Scottish Labour Pains

Unpublished Letter to The Herald, spat out 3rd March.

A reaction to yesterday's vote in Holyrood in which a motion to ask Chancellor George Osbourne to rethink a proposed hike in fuel duty was passed by 83 votes to none, with 46 abstentions by Scottish Labour.

*************************************************

Is there anything Iain Gray and company won't disagree with? They seem to bind free thought amongst their ranks the way the Chinese used to bind women's feet, with similar effects on the end product, leaving a twisted, stunted and deformed mindset. 

I couldn't believe my ears when I heard that they had abstained on a vote to ask George Osbourne to think again on raising fuel duty. It is to be hoped the S.N.P. make full use of this one in the election campaign. An abstention in a parliamentary vote should mean one of two things: "We haven't made our minds up" or "We have no opinion on this". Scottish Labour seem to have come up with a third; "Ya boo, sucks." 

To my mind, they've just demonstrated exactly why they aren't fit for office: they are clearly stupid. On one issue on which a near unanimity of view exists throughout Scotland, they have just stuck two fingers up at the electorate out of infantile spite. Voters tend to react badly to such behaviour. 

Even those who don't support the S.N.P. have expressed admiration, albeit often grudgingly, at the way they formed a minority administration and have seen out a full term. This example of consensus politics, where compromise has been demonstrated as a mature response rather than a weakness, has been a breath of fresh air in the fouled atmosphere of Scottish and U.K. politics. 

With enemies like this, the S.N.P. hardly need friends. By this measure, to ensure another term, they should put before Parliament a motion ceding office to Labour. What Ian MacWhirter recently described as "brain-dead oppositionism" would ensure that it was voted down by 83 votes to none with 46 abstentions.

Revolution news

Our correspondent has just returned from a meeting with the beseiged leader and sends this report:

'Thank you, Martin. His position is looking less tenable with every passing day. He spoke for hours and seemed completely out of touch with reality, oblivious to the widespread unrest. He droned on for so long, even some of his staunchest supporters couldn't stifle their yawns. Many had quite clearly lost faith in him and were looking anxiously about, ready to switch sides when the revolt became too much. Myself and other journalists were allowed to interview him. The following indicates just how  delusional he has become in recent weeks.'

"There have been no riots, no demonstrations" he said, adamantly. 
"Did you see any?" he asked.
"Well, yes."
"Where?" asked the leader.
"On my way here. There were thousands demonstrating."
"They were demonstrating for me,  yes?"
"No. They were demonstrating against you."

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Arms and the Placeman

Say what you like about Thatcher. No, really. Say what you like. I do. Often. But while she may have been venal, vindictive and callous, she was transparently so and therefore sincerely venal, vindictive and callous. She had neither the time nor aptitude for convincing artifice and we knew where we were with her, even if this was at the wrong end of her lead-lined handbag. This albeit inadvertant honesty was to prove her downfall, something David Cameron has clearly taken note of.

While our on/off/is he? isn't he?/on/off again friend, Muammar Gaddafi, is overseeing Libya’s brutal implosion – and without even having the decency to follow the West’s retrospectively-written script, recently performed in Tunisia and Egypt - our prime minister is presently on an already planned tour of fun-loving, anything-goes, liberal democracies in and around the Persian Gulf. Yesterday he was in Kuwait, ostensibly celebrating the 20th anniversary of its liberation from the hands of Saddam, another surplus psychopath whose tyrant’s license we revoked after he'd given Iran a good hammering with made in the U.K. tools. Don’t know about you but, after watching Cameron’s performance, my skin was not satisfied with mere crawling; it grew wings and flew off into the sunset. 

Monday, February 21, 2011

A Winter's Tale

Britain in grip of “lowest media standards ever recorded”, says report out today. 

A report out today says that Britain is in the grip of the lowest media standards ever recorded. Utility companies came in for harsh criticism after the early onset of winter failed to bring about the mass power failures and phone outages that could have protected people from the deluge of tedious and nauseating sludge still gushing from a crack in a dangerously volatile and bloated ego in the London and Metropolitan area, our media correspondent can report.

Our Information Analyst believes that the worst effects of the fog of tiresome jingoism that engulfed the country could “easily have been avoided” if people had been more prepared, and continued, “but what did you expect?” A spokesman for the Met. Office told reporters that December's cold snap had been accurately predicted weeks in advance and that there was no reason for power supplies and phone lines not to have crashed within 5 minutes of the snow starting.

The privatisation of hypocrisy

After several minutes of intentionally self-limiting and perfunctory deliberations, the Scottish and U.K. Governments have agreed to privatise the hypocrisy industry. Spokesmen for both parliaments, who refused to give their names in case these were later used to identify them said, “The advancement of complex and mutually contradictory social, economic and political ambitions simultaneously requires a degree of stratospheric detachment from reality only borderline sociopaths in the private sector can deliver.

“While we recognise that the public realm can sometimes exercise extraordinary duplicity and boundless ineffectiveness, when it comes to weasel-like avoidance of accountability and complete obliviousness to serious issues, only the private sector can provide the dedicated avarice, dubiously-obtained cash and complete abdication of social responsibility required to satisfy the demands of an increasingly confused, fragmented and, let’s face it, hopelessly dysfunctional society choking itself to death on bloated expectations and a frankly astonishing sense of individual and collective entitlement.   

Sunday, February 20, 2011

The many colours of Labour

In the beginning, there was pure red in all its unmistakable primary glory. As the years passed, this just got redder. But the day came when it could no longer sustain, clashing horribly against the now true blue backdrop of post-industrial Britain. After a long and bitter battle led by a Welshman with orange hair spouting purple prose, the Guardians of the Colour were replaced with fresh faces.  Despite being completely green, these upstarts got back in and the party appeared to be in  the pink. 

Of course, this unsightly mix of colours became too garish and eventually blended to form a uniform brown. Brown went out of fashion fairly quickly. Now the party is out of vogue in both Westminster and Holyrood (where, during their two terms of office, a sprinkling of yellow had to be introduced.) 

Nobody was sure any more what colour they were, let alone what colour they should be. Compromise being unthinkable, they now spend their time rotating between calling black white and white black with such alarming speed that all the Scottish public can see is a dull Gray.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Alternative voting requires alternative thinking

The referendum in May inviting us to opt for proportional representation in the form of the Alternative Vote throws up more questions than any change to the voting system could possibly answer. The campaign for electoral reform, however well-intentioned, has become increasingly reliant  on, and hence subservient to, attempting to satisfy popular concepts of democracy predicated on what is clearly fallacy; a belief that it is possible to please all of the people all of the time (especially Me). Pursuing this, while it may please a few people briefly, in the not-too-long run, will satisfy nobody, ever. Even-handed, granted, but hardly a great leap forward.

There is an excuse - reason is another matter entirely - for this. We live in an age when our concern for the good of wider society generally sustains no further than the point at which it encroaches on our own increasingly sharply-defined and generally selfish aspirations. The electoral reformers, rather than addressing this pandemic of myopia through focusing on the jobs they were imperfectly elected to do, have given up on any efforts to tackle it, even though this is supposedly why-I-entered-politics.