[new feudalism] two considered thoughts

They say it better than I can:

Here and here.

[the ukraine] decision time has come

You've all read it:

Ukraine was in political chaos last night after President Viktor Yushchenko attempted to seize control of the national guard, prompting accusations that he was trying to stage a coup. Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich accused Mr Yushchenko of preparing to use force in their struggle for supremacy after Mr Yushchenko said on Friday he was taking control of interior ministry troops.

Mr Yushchenko issued his decree hours after riot police loyal to the Prime Minister took over a building housing the prosecutor-general's office in Kiev following scuffles. The decree concerns troops largely responsible for maintaining public order and not the army, which is controlled by one of pro-Western Mr Yushchenko's few allies in the cabinet. He ordered the interior ministry troops to protect key sites.

Mr Yanukovich denounced the President's move as dangerous and unconstitutional. It presaged, he said, an attempt to use force to resolve Ukraine's long-running political crisis.

So, it's come to this. I think the country will have to split into the two roughly natural divisions it's now in. The Russian half will remain independent but loyal to Russia and the other will become an American satellite like Poland and Hungary.

Otherwise there'll be war or revolution. Hope Russia doesn't march in.

[blogfocus saturday] notes from the blogostocracy

What do we want from a blogger? Surely an incisive mind, sound values an eye on the issues and a sharp quill. And surely that is represented here this evening:

1 I don't recall the last time Fabian Tassano had it wrong, certainly not this time:

MPs fear the control order regime attempt to get round civil liberties by using “prisons without bars” is in danger of becoming a public laughing stock, since six of the current seventeen terror suspects subject to orders have managed to disappear.

Dr Reid is threatening to "opt out" of a key part of the European human rights convention. Such a move — which can only properly be justified by war, or a public emergency threatening the life of the nation — will represent a new round in the continuing struggle between ministers and the courts the public, over liberty versus the fight against terrorism goal of creating a police state.

7 Vox Day is called many things, not least by Michelle Malkin but what can't be denied - the boy can write. Here he looks at a survey:

Some 25 over-65s, with an average age of 70, took part in the study and trained at a gym. Not only did they acquire new strength, but the molecular machinery powering their muscles became as active as that seen in people of 20 or 30....

… and comments:

This is clearly a sign to go for the Holy Grail: the 21-inch guns. If you're already a mental freak of nature, why not become a physical one as well? I've always wanted to have an excuse to get into a confrontation with police and shout "my arms are more powerful than your guns!"

I have noticed that people who lift weights regularly do tend to look significantly younger than their age. Not in the face, but in how their body looks and how they move. And for women, I've seen 50- and 60-year olds who have butts like 17-year old girls, or at least what 17 year-old girls used to look like before they all got fat.

3 The Flying Rodent is not for the faint of heart [or hand]:

After all, nobody knows more than me what unpredictable and capricious creatures young women can be.

I recall an incident that occurred a couple of years before I met Mrs. Rodent, discussing sexual fantasies with my then girlfriend in the wee small hours of the night.

"I think think it would be quite sexy to, you know, watch each other playing with ourselves," said my ex-girlfriend, the cheeky thing that she was, and probably still is.

"Really?" I said, a little intimidated and embarrassed by the prospect, "Well, yes, I suppose it would be quite sexy, wouldn't it?"

My ex giggled, quite thrilled with her naughty suggestion.

4 Mr. Eugenides is extremely hard to encapsulate in a paragraph. Under the heading "We have to have some secrets, Darling", he opines:

Freedom of information has proved its worth since it was introduced, but there have been persistent straws in the wind suggesting that it's working just a little too well for ministers' liking.

Then follows a letter from Alistair Darling, whom Mr E describes thusly:

[N]ot since Norman Lamont has a minister so closely resembled a badger.

... and comments:

Of course, the significance of this is ... rather what it tells us about the likely fate of FoI under the next Prime Minister. Darling doesn't scratch his nuts without consulting Cyclops first. If this is what the monkey thinks, we can be sure the organ-grinder takes a similar view.

5 Croydonian, the anti-October Bank-Holidayist, has some frightening news:

Because the Osmonds are reforming. More here, but readers of a sensitive disposition may well want to ensure that sound is off before proceeding. Apparently they are marking 50 years in the biz, although I find the maths a little troubling as I can find no reference to their having done anything prior to the 60s, and in order for them to be a plurality, the second oldest would have been six at the time of founding.

6 You might wonder at the inclusion of Tim Worstall here, already a mega-blogger and the simple answer is - because he's good. First he takes the Croydonian to task:

The Croydonian thinks that the TUC's suggestion for an October Bank Holiday is a really bad one. I think it's bloody brilliant. October 21 st please. Celebrate it with a march from the square to Waterloo station, making sure that we invite the French Ambassador.

... then later tackles recycling:

So, the question becomes, why are we setting up this vastly expensive system of anaerobic biodigesters, insisting on homes being repositories for rotten food, when we have already solved the problem? Stick it all in a hole in the ground and collect the methane?

7 Whilst he certainly gets traffic to his excellent blog, I still regard Political Umpire as sadly under-rated - he should be as well known as a Worstall or a Dale:

Today I phoned Birmingham City Council on their general contact number. As expected, an automated voice message came first. It explained to me that the call may be recorded for training purposes, then started to list my options. It said something to the following effect:

"If your call is regarding anti social behaviour, press one.

If you have a general inquiry, press two."

Should I draw any inferences from the order in which those two instructions appeared?

8 The problem with my blogrolls is that Blogpowerers are not in the Blogostocracy roll. That's because they're in the Premier roll. But for that, Chicken Yoghurt would be straight in there. Here he presents the best selling album by Flatus Quo:

[I]n tribute to the departing Tony Blair, he and many of his friends have put together an album of Status Quo covers. It’s dedicated to Britain’s voters and is titled ‘Quo Vadis?’ Here’s a sneak peak of the track listings.

1. Down Down - The Labour Party Membership

2. Something ‘Bout You Baby I Like - Tony Blair and Rupert Murdoch

3. Break The Rules - Peter Mandelson and David Blunkett

4. Roll Over Lay Down - The Parliamentary Labour Party

5. Gonna Teach You to Love Me - Gordon Brown

6. Whatever You Want - Tony Blair and Rebekah Wade

7. Roll Over Lay Down (reprise) - The Parliamentary Lobby Journalists

Tuesday Blogfocus will be different in that it looks at two bloggers only at some small length. Hope to see you then.

[some slides] hover for caption

[chinese] wrath of confucius

And while we're still on the topic of the Good Lord, is there any reason you'd suppose He has a down on the Chinese?

Lightning has killed 56 people in China this year, 17 more than the same period last year, Yu Rucong, deputy chief of the China Meteorological Administration, said on Friday.

Another 65 people were injured, 26 more than in the previous year, Yu said, adding the lightning accidents have caused direct economic losses of 10.97 million yuan (US$1.4 million) in the first four months.

Just asking.

[innocence] may the force be with you

As we creep inexorably into the New Feudalism, the novel Lord of the Rings, which I've just been reading parts of again, seems fairly analogous.

It was also Memorial Day on Monday.

No one chooses to go off to war but if there's a threat, it must be met. And brave men and women do that. And it is true that it steels the soul and forges bonds - about all it has going for it.

The greatest error of the Timid is to think they can manage perfectly well by themselves, thank you very much. Really? We're managing the world well at the moment? And we can change it without either regulation or revolution? We can stop the new feudalism, in which the Home Secretary proceeds with the plan of "derogating" from Article Five of the European Convention on Human Rights for our own good?

Personally, I put my faith in the Force but the Force is like buying an Aston Martin or a Rolls - it has its price. You're not just buying a car but a whole lifestyle. You no longer wonder about the car starting each day or how it would fare in an emergency skid or in an accident. It's all taken care of, as long as you do right by the vehicle, according to the instruction manual.

But it costs and costs big.

And when you're travelling along a fair road and that road's downhill and the other man in his Lada 10 seems to be doing just as well beside you, at a fraction of the cost, you can start thinking: "I wonder if maintaining this is all worth it."

The Christian Club is exclusive, with but three entry requirements. You need to:

1 believe that you need to be redeemed in the first place;

2 believe that you can be redeemed in this manner;

3 abide by club rules, which tell you to be charitable to your fellow human.

And that's it.

Very big asks and therefore the reason the Club is so exclusive - more exclusive than the Other Side has to offer because there are so many natural barriers to entry.

So all this garbage about Holy Crusades and Inquisitions and bibles chained to pulpits and written in Latin to exclude the common man; all this Intermediary guff like pontiffs and High Priests and so on, the selling of relics, all the wars invoking the name of Jesus and sporting red crosses, rampant evangelism, bible bashing prudery, Somerset Maugham's target in his excellent tale of the stern and unbending Mr. Davidson in "Rain", devastation of native communities in the name of the Lord - all of that has zero to do with the simple Message contained in a few short pages.

A short tale from earlier days:

We used to take the kids for swimming lessons at the local pool at my northern school and the issue was that one of the new girls [about 12 years old] didn't actually wear a top but swam in her undies.

For three weeks she blithely swam almost as nature intended and strangely, none of the other kids said anything and none of us knew how to deal with it.

Then, in the fourth week, she came in a costume and a modest one too. I was appalled and I hope you do see why. In this I'm 100% with Maugham. Because what was destroyed this day was innocence, based on no discernible biblical text but on a vague sort of prudery born of a notion of what Jesus might have approved of.

You know the 80s film Never-Ending Story? And how the characters in a child's fantasy world were destroyed by the Ravening Wind named Disbelief [or Loss of Innocence]?

That's one of the main dilemmas with Christianity. Another two main problems with its image have always been:

1 the hijacking of the intellectual property through the centuries by States and by the Other Side so that frightened people inadvertently rush into the arms of the Enemy rather than the Protector;

2 the insufferable serenity of believers, nay, the insufferable enthusiasm of the Happy Clapper.

There's a reason for the latter.

I don't know of a Christian who would put it this way but in fact you are being "possessed" by a spirit the moment you click on the button "I Believe". It's a mechanism which works more infallibly than the better known phenomenon of clicking on a porn picture and automatically inviting in the embedded Trojans and other viruses to your computer system.

And someone else's new-found enthusiasm is as inviting to us as a root canal operation, particularly if we're doing life hard ourselves.

When the Happy Clappers compound that with their take-it-as-read platitudes like "Jesus loves you", that's fine for the already devout who've seen the Light but for the great unwashed out here, amongst whom I still count myself one, it's nauseatingly counterproductive.

There's a reason for that too.

JC always went after the Lost Sheep, more than the already Safe and Protected and therefore the bulk of new Christians are people who weren't coping, who didn't have the standard meathead lifestyle or suburban bourgeois decency. In other words, there had to have been something they at least perceived as wrong in life in order to have made this move.

I'm not referring to Christian households here - they're another matter.

So I suggest that the Jehovah's Witnesses and the like could do with a PR refresher course before belting on one's door in the middle of a long afternoon squawk, just to thrust The Watchtower into one's hands and to invite themselves in for a "chat".

I suspect after this I'm going to be doubly damned - I'll certainly be struck off the vicarage guest list and cast into Perdition by the Moral Majority whilst my own bunch of sinner mates and nightcap-sipping sweeties quietly slip away to someone else less Strange.

And what of folk such as Jack Rensimer and Halls of Macadamia? They know I'm for conservative values, patriotism, G-d, the armed service men and women - in other words, like my own father was - and yet I have a damned strange way of showing it in my posts.

Sigh. I don't know what to say, really.

[some notes] about the novels

Re the novels, jmb asked: "So how come we are getting these teasers? Are you going to put it up somewhere as the whole? Is it published?"

No, not published yet although I did hawk an earlier version of Book 1 to some London literary agents in 2000 and one was encouraging, if not conclusive and another was verging on rude.

They must have been rewritten twelve or thirteen times, to cut out the smart literary phraseology and make it leaner and meaner and to deepen the characterizations.

I don't know how you write yours but I have to draw characters from real life - I can't contrive or amalgamate them. Names are real too but applied to the wrong characters.

Time frame is from 1994 to around 2020 [apocalyptic]. I call them romantic thrillers but the truth is they're about a series of continual shocks from the outside world which punctuate the intimacy until they take over the story completely.

I'll try to put the first two chapters up this weekend.

[baby names] the decision of their lives

Clearly, when naming your baby, an awareness of what you're saddling the baby with is paramount.

Version 2.0 and Abyss are not 100% suitable!

In an attempt to assist you with your decision, here is a selection of rather fine names given by responsible parents to their offspring. Which will you choose?

1. Jigme [Richard Gere + Carey Lowell]

2. Fifi Trixibelle [Paula Yates/Bob Geldof]

3. Satchel [Mia Farrow/Woody Allen]

4. Moxie Crimefighter [Penn Jillette]

5. Daisy Boo [Julia/Jamie Oliver]

6. Yamma [James Brown]

7. Jermajesty [Jermaine Jackson]

8. Moon Unit [Frank/Gail Zappa]

9. Betty Kitten [Jonathan Ross & Jane Goldman]

10. Nell Marmalade [Helen Baxendale/David Eliot]

Still not entirely satisfied? There are another ten coming up next time.

[obsession] flight to the north

Second of the excerpts from my first novel, Obsession, detailing my early life in Russia [the first excerpt is here].

Fleeing from London and danger, for reasons there's no point going into here, Hugh, the anti-hero and his travel partner take a train north, to draw the baddies onto his home turf.

Being fugitives doesn't stop him showing the Russian girl around the sights and here they get to the Saltersgate, high on a ridge not far from York.

He waited for the inevitable question – why legendary?

‘The legend states vaguely, because my memory’s not all that hot, that there were some smugglers hiding out here at the pub, back in the mists of time; an exciseman got too close, he was bumped off and the body was buried beneath the hearth.

They had to keep a fire eternally burning so that no one would ever look underneath. So it has been ever since and even in the middle of summer that bloody fire is still going - it'll be going today.’

‘You guys make the most of your history, don’t you?’

‘Da.’

She was delighted when the road led onto a long, high ridge between two valleys and then, there it was in front of them in the distance, commanding spectacular views across the valley.

‘This is a postcard,’ she whispered.

Hugh just smiled to himself.

The next surprise was the publican coming from around the bar, his huge hand extended. Hugh immediately ordered XB.

‘Nope,’ said the publican.

‘No?’

‘XB’s rubbish today. Try the Camerons.’

‘Camerons? Yuk!’

‘Try the Camerons today.’

A pint and a half of Camerons was brought to their table not too near the fire, together with a bowl of nuts they hadn’t even ordered. Hugh was grinning from ear to ear and she was studying him closely.

‘You ordered XB Hugh. How can he tell you no?’

‘The man’s an expert. If he says Camerons, then Camerons it is. He has the cleanest pipes in Britain.’

‘Cleanest what?’

‘Pipes, trubichki, you know - where the beer passes along.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Right - stay here and let me get the menus.’ A conversation ensued with the publican and both were grinning. Hugh came back. ‘The Yorkshire Pud’s good today, it seems. You hungry?’

She shot him a scornful look. ‘OK, here’s the programme – beer and nuts, whilst they get the food ready. May I suggest the Yorkshire Pud – ’

‘What’s that?’

‘Tyesta, batter, in the shape of a bowl and into it is poured meat and onions and other things. You like kharcho at home?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then maybe you’d like this. And one more thing – while we’re waiting for our food, the publican’s going to take us ... downstairs,’ he concluded, mysteriously, ‘and he doesn’t do it for everyone.’

‘I’m not even going to ask.’

Richard came over and asked if they were ready. What followed was a tour down to the basement, replete with wooden and metal barrels and he proceeded to explain to Ksenia the intricacies of storing, tapping, the cleaning of the pipes, the gas and so on, until he’d led them back up and behind the bar.

‘And that’s where it ends – at the tap,’ the publican concluded.

‘And notice he doesn’t use metal valves, he uses the draw pumps,’ added Hugh.

She was far more impressed with the passion these two guys were showing for their subject than with the finer details themselves but somehow she was sure she’d been privy to something pretty special or else the British always got enthused about the mundane. She’d have to stew over this one later.

For now, she was the centre of attention and two guys were falling over backwards for her - a most satisfactory arrangement all round.

The food was far from mundane and a touch of nostalgia crept in during the Yorkshire Pud; it reminded Ksenia of her grandmother’s cooking but she said nothing. They toasted the memory of that poor official who’d been the inadvertent cause of the legend then, after profuse thanks to the publican, headed out to the car park at the side.

The air was heavy with the unmistakable aroma of the countryside - pollen, grass, trees and always that breathtakingly sheer drop into the valley either side of the hotel. The Escort was a cabriolet and as they pulled onto the main road from the crisp gravel and the car picked up speed down the hill; the breeze had her hair streaming behind and she briefly felt at one with the world.

Hugh was going faster now and the bottom of the hill was coming up and there was a sharp bend and he wasn’t slowing down. She glanced across anxiously, as he suddenly dropped speed, then accelerated through the bend, the car bottoming out and then tearing up to the next crest.

...and so on. For devotees who note the inconsistencies in the ale terminology, I'd appreciate if you set me straight.

All parts of the dialogues happened but not necessarily at the same time or in the same place. Actually the place we fled to was Bergen but the pub scene over there is a bit hazy and this part of the plot demanded Britain.

[cranes] dancing across the sky

Interesting things happening across the road and I don't think I'd do them.

There are three tall houses being built and the eighteen story variant had men on the very top floor just now, being supplied by three cranes.

All very colourful and even graceful - a dance of tubular steel in gold, red and blue - wish I owned a camera. One arm of the mother crane was hovering over the baby crane, almost protecting it.

Another crane, presumably the daddy, carrying a metal grill across against the clouds, reached the concrete edge of the top floor, one worker leant over to pull it in and it looked to me as if he had no safety harness of any kind.

At least it would be mercifully quick.

On the ground are the foundations of whatever - jagged metal rods sticking vertically out of concrete blocks - and I couldn't help feeling that this called for some jaunty doggerel. So here is one I cobbled together just now:

Cranes in their natural habitat,
Motionless stand and wait;
An innocent workman approaches the edge,
Just metres form his fate.

The whir of the motor, the high crane swings;
He reaches out in space,
As five passing seagulls drop their load,
Hitting him in the face.

Spluttering, it briefly slips his mind -
His precariously positioned perch -
As he tumbles, clutching at the grill
And the crane gives a mighty lurch.

Swift as an eagle, the grill is dropped,
The workman hears no roar
As the grill swings back like a cricket bat
And he hits the 13th floor.

Hands frantically clutch, he's safely dragged;
They can see he'll live some more.
"Well, you'd best get back then," the foreman grunts;
He returns to the eighteenth floor.

Just looking over there again now and there's another madman striding across the steep roof of the little house above the top floor. Better man than I am, Gunga Din.