[guido] the rich get richer and the poor …

It all began, as far as I can see, with this attack by Tim [the manic] Ireland, giving a point by point account as to why Guido Fawkes should be struck off. Countless other bloggers got in on the act. Then Paul Linford weighed in with this:

Keen observers may have noticed that, with the possible exceptions of UK Daily Pundit and myself, the debate is thus far polarising on political lines....

That may well be so but I don’t consider myself to be particularly left wing and Guido’s account of the tiff:

Skip this if you have a low boredom threshold, because it is for the geeks. Guido himself is basically simultaneously bored by, but amused that the blog boycott / de-link call has so spectacularly badly backfired, with hits up again to a new month and year high at 2,345,463 page views yesterday … so it looks like it is over and normal service can resume. So, for old times sake and just to wind Blog Brother up one last time, here are yesterday's stats. On Day 2 of the link boycott, Blog Brother himself slipped from fifth to sixth ranked link referrer…

… does not fill me with love for the man. Some time back, on someone’s blog, Guido’s alter ego commented and I commented under it, supporting what I thought were his essentially correct remarks. I’m not ‘naturally’ anti-Guido. But I am anti-bignoters who crow about their stats and for whom it’s the only purpose of blogging.

I have just been through his blog [thereby contributing, in a miniscule way, to his already swollen stats] and I’ve come to a conclusion I hope is not jaundiced:

He may have once been a good blogger. Who knows? He’s not anywhere near the blogger Iain Dale is now. Whatever one says about Iain, his posts are well-written and are not constantly self-referential [not constantly were the words]. In other words, he delivers product. Plus there’s Doughty. Doughty can’t be ignored, it is heavily influential and well put together.

Iain Dale contributes to the blogosphere in other ways too. He’s forever analysing it, creating lists and running drinks evenings for bloggers of a certain bent. Which is where Guido comes back in because he was one half of the latter event and all credit to him.

In the end, for the life of me I can’t see what 2,345,463 people see in his blog and why he wields such enormous influence. I can name eight to ten blogs immediately which are better and that was the primary purpose behind Blogpower. To give the top blogger [without the readership] a small chance.

I have no personal beef with Guido. It’s just a Dr. Fell situation, really.

[sublime classic] does such an animal exist

What is sublime? What is the most sublime piece of music you ever heard, what was the context and did you ever hear it repeated?

Was it somewhere here:

Beethoven - Piano Trio Op. 97 in B Major, Brahms - Piano Trio No. 3 in c minor orShostakovitch - Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor [with Natalia Gutman], which, incidentally, is coming up live in early February.

Can popular music ever be sublime? If my reputation is not already shot to ribbons, I’m going to thrust forward the Stranglers’ Down in the Sewer [all four movements of it] as an example of how a genre was hijacked and turned into a piece of fabulous music [within the parameters of pseudo-punk].

All right, all right, I know, I know. So what about Thijs van Leer and his magic flute, with Jan Akkerman and his improvised guitar and keyboards, in Focus, in such classics as Birth and Hamburger Concerto?

What about one of my favourite groups of all time – Can – and Tago Mago?

[bitta bovva] the chavs and the happy-slappers

I s’pose I can’t talk.

I was roaming London in the days of Splodginessabounds’ Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please, lived next door to the genesis of some record label I can’t remember [Virgin? Island?], drank in ‘ammersmith and Stamford Bridge, wore smoking jacket, bowler and Stranglers teashirt and generally made a prat of myself.

You all remember Bad Manners, the Beat, the Specials, the Selecter and so on? That was my era and there’s always been a bit of an underculture in Britain.

Fast forward twenty five years and I’m right out of it. What is this chav culture? Something about Burberry and Prada and Rooney – seems like it’s just a metamorphosis of the old thing which was always going on. Violence? London was always violent. Doug ‘n Dinsdale wouldn’t tell me why but they assured me it was so.

So is there anything actually … wrong with it … other than a bit of high spirits? Utterpants says:

"Short of enforced sterilisation, these shameless sluts will continue to breed like sex-crazed rabbits—smoking, drinking, fighting and fornicating their way into every corner of the land."

"Sterilisation?" we asked. "Isn't that a bit drastic?"

"It's simply no good pussy-footing around with bans on the sale of Burberry baseball caps and designer tracksuits to teenage Chavs," he replied, as he sucked on a curiously shaped glass pipe and blew a cloud of pungent smelling tobacco in our direction …"

Uh-huh. Still doesn’t seem all that bad. Sad that the young have turned into mindless excuses for humans, strangling the language in the process but still, we can’t change the world, right? Then I saw this Guardian article. Wiki put it more in context:

England, 18 June 2005: Police arrested three 14-year-old boys for the suspected rape of an 11-year-old girl who attended their school in Stoke Newington, London. Authorities were alerted when school staff saw footage from the students' mobile phones.

Nice stuff. Have we finally reached this stage?

[cancer] breast density huge factor

Researchers have found that women whose breast density was 75 per cent or more were 4.7 times more likely to develop cancer than those with density under 10 per cent. Women with dense breasts were 18 times more likely to find a cancerous tumour within 12 months of a negative mammogram.

This underscores that cancer is actually hardest to detect in women with the highest risk, a double-whammy that will likely result in a serious rethinking of screening.

Pardon my ignorance but by ‘dense breasts’, do they mean … er … ‘big breasts’? Well, apparently not:

On a mammogram, the gland tissue in the breast looks "dense." This means that it's thick or hard to see through. Some women have denser breasts than others. Dense breasts have more glandular and connective tissue and less fat tissue. Younger women tend to have denser breasts than older women. And thinner women tend to have denser breasts than heavier women.

Seems to me women have a lot to contend with in life.

[evil] does it exist or is it just sociological

Musa Hilal, Janajaweed leader and his 'alleged' handiwork, seen through children's drawings at the time

Fascinating post by Norman Geras which there’s no point reprinting here but he asks the question of the title above – does evil exist as an entity or is it all due to sociological factors? Having looked in a little detail at the Sudan atrocities, pictured by children and those of Algeria and given my leaning towards a Christian explanation of evil, it would be clear where I stand.

Not wishing to debase the issue but seeing parallels in film, Darth Vader seems a case in point. Was he evil? He seems to have succumbed to it – the good made bad. But that still doesn’t resolve the question as to whether this is a mechanical human process or the result of mal-intent.

This question will not go away and will become more and more insistent on resolution as the next few years unfold for the world.

[doomsday clock] now set forward two minutes

This blog believes many things but it doesn’t believe one can predict the end of the world. Too many times doomsday devotees have made the prediction and too many times the fatal day has then passed.

It’s also written in scripture that it’s impossible to predict, so why bother? On the other hand, this particular clock is maintained by the world’s premier scientists:

The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock has been moved closer to the fatal midnight hour to reflect the growing concerns of global terrorism, the unchecked nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and - in a first - the threat of climate change.

The clock was first set 60 years ago by an elite group of nuclear scientists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, shortly after the United States dropped its atomic bombs on Japan. The clock, which hangs in the University of Chicago, has been set at seven minutes to midnight since 2002. It was moved Wednesday to five minutes before the hour.

Seems to be something to keep at the back of the mind, not that there’s a lot we can do. Also, it seems a tadge political to me. However, there’s no doubt we’re now in perilous times.

[uk unemployment] papering up the cracks

Talk-talk has replaced make-make

UK unemployment claims fell more than expected in December to a nine-month low as expansion in service industries prompted companies to hire more workers.

It has been said that the British worker is motivated by a number of factors, of which ambition is the highest rating. It’s also been said that he lacks motivation in the first place and the blame for this is sheeted home to the employer, which is only partly fair.

The portrait of the British worker has changed. You know the old images – cap and gladstone bag and British workmanship equalled quality. Now it equals words. Also, the service industry is not production. It doesn’t actually … er … produce anything tangible except images and words.

Another aspect is that the British worker has priced himself out of a job, as our own Martin Kelly has mentioned before. The worker has overunionized himself.

All of this is characteristic of a banana republic and the road there is twisted and pockmarked but nevertheless, it is all downhill and inevitable.

[blogosphere] aristocratic pretensions cut no ice

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Venerable Lord James the Extemporaneous of Chalmondley Chumleyton Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Was it for this reason that I informed the esteemed blogroll of last evening's Blogfocus, employing the third person singular? It has been brought to my attention by more than one blogger and they were in no way being pedantic, that I seem to have been getting a little dizzy, a little light headed of late.

Please accept my apologies and normal service will be resumed henceforth.

[blogfocus tuesday] vital issues

1] Straight into it and L’Ombre is wondering about the discrepancies in Heinz Beanz on either side of the channel:

To go along with the Verizon Maths noted a couple of days ago here we present proof that the English and the French apparently measure/count things differently. In the English ingredients, Beans are 51% and Tomatoes are 33%. In the French version we have only 49% Haricots blancs (beans) and 27% Tomates. I'd be curious to see what proportions are in Heinz baked beans bought in other countries and I'd love to know what the explanation for this state of affairs is.

2] A big welcome to the Norfolk Blogger and to his shocking revelation about Mars Bars:

I always read and hear Tories going on about "the nanny state", but this is obsessive. Having a permit for fatty foods is hardly going to endear Mr Cameron to fish and chip shop owners in Glasgow who have been known to deep fry Mars bars.

3] The Flying Rodent, [and I do like the man’s style], is more concerned with the gruesomely botched executions and offers this:

I'm looking forward to the executions of Chemical Ali and Doctor Germ. With comic book nicknames like that, how can Moqtada's boys resist? I reckon they'll be blindfolded, locked in a room strewn with rakes and left to clatter about smacking themselves in the face for an hour or so, just as an appetiser.

Eleven more bloggers plus the Mystery Blogger here.

[mathematical formula] it all adds up

S + G + L + R + W = NE

Where:

S = snowflakes gently falling outside
G = little gift
L= cuddly lady
R= good red
W= warm room
NE= nice evening