[poll closed] next poll up

This Poll is closed: Regarding Seven Seven, did Tony Blair:

Know beforehand 83%
Not know beforehand 13%
Have a fair idea 4%

24 votes total

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[george and hugo] thick skin needed in politics

Mussolini had nothing on this boy

This has to be some kind of classic rant from the monomaniacal madman himself:

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's president, leading 20,000 supporters in an anti-American rally, shouted "Gringo go home!" on Friday night to raucous applause in a crowded football stadium in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.

Alluding to Bush's waning years in office, Chavez said: "The US president today is a true political cadaver and now he does not even smell of sulphur anymore. What the little gentleman from the North now exudes is the smell of political death and in a very short time he will be converted into cosmic dust and disappear from the stage."

Chavez added that he did not come to "sabotage" Bush's visit, saying the timing was a coincidence, even as Bush landed in neighbouring Uruguay for a 36-hour visit.

Politics is sweet, n'est ce pas?

[expats] you can never come home

Do you remember the 2004 San Diego Acura Women’s Tennis Classic? Neither did I until I read a piece on some very bitchy comments which are now burnt into the psyche.

In a nutshell, there was a bit of stick between the Russian women players. Yelena Dementyeva said fellow countrywoman Maria Sharapova was "not really Russian."

Then French Open champion, Anastasia Myskina, joined the debate with: "Maria lives in the United States and she's more comfortable speaking English than she is speaking Russian," Myskina said. "I doubt she's been back to Russia since the age of seven."

It was Sharapova's reply which got me: "I don't feel American at all. I feel this is part of my job. Even though I train in America, I'm still Russian. I came to the United States because of my tennis. I moved here because of my tennis, not for anything else."

Now I don't know how you feel about it but to me this is a little, well, ungrateful and ungracious. That country has given her succour and helped her reach and win two major championship titles - doesn't she feel the least bit American?

I'm more than grateful that Russia, for all its internal flaws, tolerates me and so far appears to value my contribution. It doesn't make me Russian but I can tell you I'd never go to war against this country. Nor against Britain, America, Australia or Canada.

It's possibly best to feel this way about your adoptive country as research shows almost a third of repatriates end up abroad again, illustrating that coming home from an overseas assignment is often harder than leaving in the first place.

When expats return, there's a tendency to expect that life will continue just the way it was, that they can pick up from where they left off but their friends may have moved on and new co-workers and others get tired of hearing stories about life abroad.

Repats are often placed in specially constructed, temporary jobs and those in regular employment often feel threatened by returnees who might have advised prime ministers or worked for NASA, say.

They're rarely appreciated and often go back overseas, greatly disappointed. That's when the reality of their ghostly existence comes home to them.

Unwanted at home, never really accepted by their hosts, they live in a twilight world where their status is that of the eternal guest. Welcome guest, maybe but guest nonetheless.

It's not unlike a group of humans on an orbiting space station, discovering that the earth has been obliterated. There's a certain adjustment each crew member must personally make.

Somerset Maugham's The Lotus Eater springs to mind here. Would that that situation never arises.

Sharapova in Nationality Feud, Monday, Reuters, August 2, 2004;

Repatriation, Leslie Gross Klaff, Looksmart [U.S.A.], July, 2002.

[science] birds stressed out to see what happens

In a study of European black grouse, the researchers first put captive birds under stress to measure the levels of stress hormone corticosterone that emerged in their faeces.

The scientists then took that knowledge and used it to measure the stress hormone levels in animals in the south-western Swiss Alps. What they found was that native birds in outdoor recreation areas are suffering higher stress levels than birds in undisturbed habitats.

So, first the "correct" conclusion that off piste skiing is disturbing native wildlife in alpine regions and that indeed is a terrible thing. However, the bit which got me was: " researchers first put captive birds under stress to measure …" Could you, yourself, put some birds in your care under stress, immune to their cries of anguish, convinced that by torturing them, you were saving the planet?

Call me weak but I couldn't and certainly not if all it was going to prove was that off piste skiing can disturb wildlife. There appears to be a disconnection here between what the scientific community deems acceptable and humane and what is achieved by this.

[vale john inman] now you truly are free

Mike Berry, who played Mr Spooner in Are you Being Served?, told the BBC: "I felt like going home at the end of the day and ironing my face, he made me laugh so much! As funny as he was in front of the camera, he was funnier off.”

John Inman was a talent, who'll be sadly missed by many.

[democracy] thoughts on a popular misconception

Tribute to Iain [Dale for those who've been living on the planet Zog]:

Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, Vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.

[diana] just when you thought it was safe to return ...

I think … I hope … this is my last post on this. Hallelujah!

Testimony does not depend on which publication it is reported in. It's either on the record or it's not and though I plan to go through the last Diana piece and redo the links [probably on Sunday], the primary purpose was just to collate testimony this time round, particularly that of eyewitnesses. I was too tired at the end to do much more.

The secondary purpose was not so much to convince the reader, who has his or her own prejudices but to provide a dossier of the known and reported data, in order to answer false claims, should another whitewash be organized.

For Elizabeth Butler-Sloss to investigate herself, at taxpayer's expense, then to claim she'd 'never seen evidence' is exactly like the French police claiming that despite the CCTV and radar cameras all along the Voie Georges Pompidou, none of the outside CCTV cameras on any of the buildings along the route showed anything relevant to the crash probe.

A further example is when a colleague said: "Oh, the driver was drunk, wasn't he?" Well no, it certainly doesn't look like he was. Even a cursory reading of the evidence on this point would show that. And yet that view persists among the public, on the strength of a flawed autopsy report which three separate medical teams who reviewed it found to be simply unsound and upon an unwillingness to view the actual evidence.

This is the sort of thing I find intensely annoying - making claims without evidence and parroting the official line, especially when the official line has been shown to be erroneous and the authorities themselves have retracted the more outrageous of the distributed assessments.

So all right. For what it's worth, having viewed this material, certain things seems clear. There's little doubt that the Mercedes was being harassed by two cars and a few motorbikes and this lays the blame squarely at the feet of the paparazzi, who have much to answer for.

But for one of the bikes to swing only metres in front of a Mercedes descending into a tunnel at 120kph and for the pillion passenger to swing round and shoot a blinding flash into the driver's eyes, whilst at the same time a Fiat collides with the front corner of the big car and a third car knocks the Mercedes on the side, this seems a trifle more than paparazzi harassment.

At a minimum, this is tantamount to manslaughter. The alternative is that the Mercedes was being shepherded into the pillar. And that's a whole new ball game.

[diana] the chronology collated

For nine hours now, on the International Day of Women, I've been silent, as I've been collating all the details I have on the Diana case into some semblance of order. It's my little gift to her memory.

The only way I can get any order into this thing is to present each point in the story with all the available evidence relating to that point - eyewitness accounts, official versions and statistics and then trust to the reader to make some sense of it. It's a long read but I hope it presents the facts accurately:

Early indication

From the mid 1990's, Diana released a series of audio, videotapes and letters voicing her fears that she would be killed in a car crash made to look like an accident. In one letter, Diana stated, "My husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for Charles to marry”.

July, 1997

The Chicago Tribune on July 15, 1997 wrote: The 36-year-old princess was pictured late Monday leaning over a yacht and reportedly telling the reporters: "You are going to get a big surprise, you'll see. You are going to get a big surprise with the next thing I do."

Robert Jobson, London Evening Standard, June 25, 2004 wrote: "Author Andrew Morton, in his new book, Diana: In Pursuit Of Love, alleges British or US intelligence had forced Diana to change her plans to stay with American billionaire Teddy Forstmann in the summer of 1997, saying it was too dangerous to take her sons there. The block on her travel plans meant that instead, she took a summer break with Mohamed Fayed."

The Private Secretary's leave and Tony Blair's plane

On the night of the 30th/31st, Sir Robin Janvrin was based in the equerries' room, where he also fielded incoming messages. He was on duty because his superior — the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, had taken a weekend's leave.

A middle-aged English wireless operator at the embassy in Paris came on duty in the early evening of August 30, expecting his night shift to be routine, sending encrypted phone calls and messages from the embassy via UK listening stations to Downing Street, the heads of Whitehall departments and, if necessary, senior aides of the Royal Family.

Just before midnight, as Diana was preparing to leave the Ritz Hotel with Dodi two well-spoken men burst through the door of the communications room. Described as "public school", they ordered this operative to leave his post and not to return until told. He told a colleague: "It was that bastard Fellowes. He turfed me out of my own office."

The collation continues here.

In Keeping with the Times

Deogolwulf lurks beneath the erudite and highbrow Joy of Curmudgeonry up in Lancashire and is wont to opine: Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað, which I'm sure you'd agree has a certain ring to it. So read on, intrepid reader, then get you over to his site for your daily dose of curmudgeonry with an edge:

"Nothing avails: one must go forward—step by step further into decadence" [1]. Nietzsche was never one to understate his case; but if one has not yet succumbed to the doctrine of the proverbial ostrich, one might still see that customs, old institutions, anything that smacks, in a word, of tradition: all such must now be cast aside in keeping with the times, that is to say, in keeping with a political passion and a public temper that cannot tolerate anything that might hold it back; for there has crept into the mind of modern man a quite pathetic submission to the practicalities of political power.

The dangers we have to fear may roughly be summed up in the single word — disintegration. It is the end to which we are being driven, alike by the defective working of our political machinery, and by the public temper of the time. [2]

The odd thing about modern "progressive" man — what sets him apart from his forebears — is that when some old custom or institution, tamed and made humane by time and bitter trial, is said to be not in keeping with the present times, then it is not the present times to which he directs his critical eye, so as to see what therein makes it intolerant of that thing, but rather his eye fixes narrowly on that thing itself, as though it were the wild and dangerous upstart, the foreign interloper — and this in an age that quite ludicrously prides itself on its tolerance! It is an age, however, in which the greater part of tolerance is given over to that which destroys.

Nowadays it is enough that any idea or proposal be meant in the conservative’s sense for it to come to nothing; only that which disintegrates and levels has any real power now. [3]

The present merits of an old custom or institution, its historic service to ideals such as harmony, authority, liberty, or justice — always imperfectly realised — cannot bear scrutiny in a mind that has been seduced by the promise of perfection, still less in one that has been flattered into believing that this perfection is a birthright soon to be realised in the practical application of political power.

Devices laboriously set up to keep popular passions within bounds are now derided as little better than superstitions. [4]

The hubris with which modern "progressive" man proceeds will likely lead to all the adverse consequences which experience relates, unless, that is, there will be something new or hitherto unseen in the unfettered but harnessed expression of popular passions, something that leads to more than just a practical, brutish, and uncultured system for the accrual of power and wealth. One would have to be quite the hopeful fool to believe it likely — and quite in keeping with the times.
.....
[1] F.W. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche, (New York: The Viking Press, 1954), §43, p. 547; original emphasis.
[2] Lord Salisbury, "Disintegration", in Quarterly Review, October 1883, quoted by Andrew Roberts, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (London: Phoenix, 2000), pp. 274-5.
[3] ["Es genügt heutigentags, daß irgendein Gedanke, ein Vorschlag im Sinne der Konservativen gemeint sei, so ist es praktisch nichts damit; nur das Auflösende und Nivellierende hat jetzt wirkliche Kraft."] Jacob Burckhardt, Brief an Friedrich von Preen, 17. November 1876, Briefe (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1929), p. 421.
[4] Richard M. Weaver, "Review of Betrand de Jouvenal, On Power: Its Nature and the History of its Growth", The Commonweal, Vol. 50:19, 9th August 1949; reprinted in In Defense of Tradition: Collected Shorter Writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963, ed. by T.J. Smith III (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000), p.514.

[lords destruction bill] last obstacle to eu removed

In some of the most slanted language this blog have yet to read in a major news source, Adrian Croft, of Reuters, wrote:

MPs voted on Wednesday for a historic shake-up of the tradition-bound Lords, saying all or most of its members should be elected instead of appointed as most are now. If put into practice, the vote could transform the influence and image of the centuries-old Lords, which is at the centre of a storm over suspected illegal political funding.

It is not at the "centre of a storm". Certain people who are in the chamber are at the centre, not the institution and the Lords itself, as an entity, has absolutely nothing to do with it. This attempt by the controlled media to create an exasperated mood of 'how much more are we to put up with' is precisely what the Nazi regime created over the Jews. Same tactic.

And there is one of the main thrusts of the funding scandal and why it saw the light of day. The role of the Lords was such a crucial obstacle to Tony's masters but this vote, coupled with the EU constitution legislation, forced into existence irrespective of referenda results and public opinion polls, shows what we're up against. I come back again to Martine Martin's words:

I will argue that point to the death. I've never read an argument yet for this that stands up in any way. To say that an unelected second chamber is somehow "inappropriate for the 21st century" reeks of an incredibly superficial understanding of democracy and our parliamentary system in general. As we know, any banana republic can have elections. They're meaningless compared to all the other nuances of a political system created in order to remove the potential for corruption or abuse of power.

This blog has already put forward proposals on the reconstruction of the Lords which would have accommodated any genuine concern over abuses but that's not what this latest vote is about. It's about nothing more nor less than the reconstitution of a once noble House as a rubber stamp for an autocratic ruler who, in turn, is subservient to his EU masters and then, by definition, to the Finance they themselves serve in Bavaria and Paris.

People of Britain, please wake from the slumber you've been lulled into. If you do not protest this vehemently, your last rights as citizens will have passed irrevocably out of your hands. You've been fragmented - some chasing the cash-for-peerages, some chasing other scandals, some still concerned with Iraq and rightly so, rightly so.

But to ignore this threat to democracy because it's not the flavour of the month or because you have a natural distaste for toffy-nosed aristocrats is to fail to see the thorn in the side of Blair and his masters that this House has been. Now that thorn has been extracted.