[the non-quiz] true or false

Which of these two stories is true and which false?

1. Copies of LittleBigPlanet are being recalled from shops worldwide after it emerged that a background music track contained two phrases from St. Matthew's gospel about loving thy neighbour. Sony issued an apology for any offence that its use of the backing track might have caused.

2. Copies of LittleBigPlanet are being recalled from shops worldwide after it emerged that a background music track contained two phrases from the Koran. Sony issued an apology for any offence that its use of the backing track might have caused.

Answer

Duh.

[jobsworths] no time to help, no time to think

I was at the Post Office and saw something which really stopped me in my tracks. There was an old lady, I don't know, maybe seventy and she was trying to either pay something in or get some payment back.

For a start, she couldn't cope with the fast moving line which then fanned out to the "Cashier-N3-please-sing-song window". Once there, it was all brisk.

"Yes luv?" demanded the fortyish woman behind glass and the slow speaking old lady tried to explain but of course they'd changed the procedure, hadn't they?

"Here, luv, just fill these out," and she was given four forms to complete and sign. She might have had Parkinsons, she might have just been jittery but she tried to go through them and completely failed. Perhaps the eyesight was not so good.

Now she was just blocking the way for all the foot-tapping, bustling, young middle-agers waiting in the line and there was total indifference to her plight. At that same moment, I was called to one of the windows for my posting. The stamp was slapped down, I paid and the woman behind glass then walked off. She came back in three minutes and I was still there - her annoyance was showing.

In my sweetest voice, I asked her the question I'd been waiting to ask before she'd walked off and she shot back the reply but it was to the wrong question, so I had to ask again. By the time I got away, the old lady had gone - she'd clearly either given up or had been told to go home and complete them there.

This whole thing stank and it seems it's not an isolated phenomenon. Here's another:

A Job Centre in Bolton demanded that "friendly" be removed from a job ad on the basis that it discriminates against the unfriendly - "enthusiastic" and "motivated" have also been victims of similar bans.

Those women behind glass probably felt they were being eminently reasonable , in a jobsworth way but they simply weren't being reasonable. That old lady should have been sent an officer from behind the counter to help her fill in the forms - it would have taken maybe three minutes to do and the Post Office would have had one satisfied and very grateful customer.

It really affected me, that incident and made me think of some concierge service for the elderly or incapacitated. I don't know how to do it, as I'd hate to take money from pensioners and yet I'd like to get something going for just such situations. Need to think on't.

[disturbing images] bolting the stable door ...

Lebanese kids stressed out by wall to wall inhumanity - kids in the west have so far escaped this but are immersed in a different form of wall to wall inhumanity.

The trouble with this post is that it runs contrary to the majority view, particularly that of many under 40s.

The NSPCC has run a poll of children which I find, quite frankly, bizarre. For a start the children had to be on the net to respond, they had to know to go to the site and then they were asked for degrees of how far they had been disturbed by images:

Some 377 of 497 votes cast claimed to have been disturbed by internet images. One child posted a comment on a There4me message board saying: "I've seen violent images I didn't search for. I was freaked out."

Don't get me wrong - this is a disturbing issue but it needs far more than a flawed poll which plays into the hands of the "porn and violence never disturbed me" school of justification. If a supporter of protecting children can pick holes in this poll, how much more are the opponents of it going to take it apart?

The essence is that, in a society where almost the whole of the new generation has been denied access to the traditional social contract and values, where the proliferation of porn and violence on the web cannot be checked or filtered to any discernible degree, children in a web based lifestyle, even within the school walls, are going to be drawn both by the accessibility and by the peer group mores, sliding younger and younger into this stuff.

This is not just naked female bodies here but the dislocation of any form of affection at these sites. The gaming sphere is about destruction and defence, the relations with women are shallow. It is skewing the human persona and suppressing or not mentioning one side of it, the good side, whilst playing up the other elements, e.g. revenge, these days with fiendish embellishments. And yes, I have seen them.

This is what kids are accessing and you'd have to be pretty naive to think otherwise. How on earth could you say that, with kids accessing quite sick stuff [and do you think they would settle for the tamer stuff], that they are not being affected in terms of long term jaundicing of their outlook on life?

You can quote any number of studies - in this field they are, by definition, flawed becasue this is an unquantifiable thing - but it is is sheer common sense that kids brought up in a vacuum with only these values as their late night companions, with added piquancy as parents try to bolt the stable door, are going to be affected by that. They are kids after all, for goodness sake, with underdeveloped emotional and mental equipment.

You only have to look at the streets and the schools, to compare that to three decades ago, to see that the thing has slid downhill. Without any means of reference to that earlier time, except for revisionist and selective histories, how can Generation Y and Z determine whether things have gone downhill or not?

How to educate a whole generation swamped by an industry dedicated to purveying this material and these values? One can only hope that, with maturity, the kids, after growing up, will have a Who experience, as in "905" from Who are You [1978]:

In suspended animation
My childhood passed me by
If I speak without emotion
Then you know the reason why

Knowledge of the universe
Was fed into my mind
As my adolescent body
Left its puberty behind

And everything I know is what I need to know
And everything I do's been done before
Every sentence in my head
Someone else has said
At each end of my life is an open door

I have a feeling deep inside
That somethin' is missing
It's a feeling in my soul
And I can't help wishing

That one day I'll discover
That we're living a lie
And I'll tell the whole world
The reason why

[political comedy] the only way out perhaps

One of the key elements missing from political debate today is surely humour. If we can't stop this government by argument or by lawsuit, perhaps we can try ridicule. Let's bring back Spitting Image.



Incidentally, can you imagine a show like that in Italy with Silver Silvio the target? Would Gordo allow it today? At least this one is still going:

[the candle of freedom] stil flickering ... about to be doused

Andrew Allison has run two posts in recent days which, IMHO, are very important "line in the sand" pieces. One was on capitalism as a concept and the other on imperial measurements.

On the first, Rob, of The Broadsheet Rag, draws attention to Brown's dumbness with this quote:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said the current global financial crisis has “laid bare the weaknesses of unbridled free markets”.

... coupled with:

The ethic of fairness means we reward hard work, thrift, enterprise, effort and responsible risk taking, but refuse to condone or reward irresponsible or excessive risk taking ...

I suggested to Andrew that "private [or free] enterprise" sounds better than "capitalism" and to Rob, that it was not so much dumb as the next stage in the ongoing agenda. These people stick to neo-Hegelianism like limpets, don't they? Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Or in political terms:

1. Create a crisis or let one be created by inaction and deliberate ineptitude;

2. Reap the worldwind of people's approbation, shrug the shoulders and suggest that under your current powers, you can do very little;

3. Step in with a "solution', a giving to the people of what they are crying out for, along with all the elements of what you originally wanted to achieve.

Are there still people out there who seriously believe there is no agenda? No matter, the next year should address this.

Calling a spade a spade, we are headed for a new era where the covert structure now being laid in place becomes increasingly transparent, in line with the level of personal security these bstds feel and it is state socialism on the menu, with capitalistic running mates, just as the NEP men of the 20s operated.

It is not just governments who are inimical to free enterprise - it is the monopolies too. Brown's "unbridled free markets" is not in the least directed at the oligopoly. It is aimed squarely at the small investor, the small businessman. The person trying to make a living by his own risk taking and hard work.

The notion of Brown suddenly coming out with a solution which will "save the world", given his persona, is so Yes Minister, especially the point where Hacker becomes PM. A "success" is engineered for him and the new-Churchill rides a temporary wave of applause.

It all makes me sick because it was predicted long ago. Here is Svali, in the year 2000:

There will be continued conflict in the Middle East, with a severe threat of nuclear war being the culmination of these hostilities. An economic collapse that will devastate the economy of the US and Europe, much like the great depression. One reason that our economy continues limping along is the artificial support that the Federal Reserve had given it, manipulating interest rates, etc.

But one day, this won't work (or this leverage will be withdrawn on purpose) and the next great depression will hit. The government will call in its bonds and loans, and credit card debts will be called in. There will be massive bankruptcies nationwide. Europe will stabilize first and then Germany, France and England will have the strongest economies, and will institute, through the UN, an international currency. Japan will also pull out, although their economy will be weakened.

Peacekeeping forces will be sent out by the UN and local bases to prevent riots. The leaders will reveal themselves, and people will be asked to make a pledge of loyalty during a time of chaos and financial devastation.

Since 2001, I've watched world events unfold, occasionally dropping back into this quote above to check progress. What about this one?

1933 - "The Shape of Things to Come" by H. G. Wells is published. Wells predicts a second world war around 1940, originating from a German-Polish dispute.

After 1945 there would be an increasing lack of public safety in "criminally infected" areas. The plan for the "Modern World State" would succeed on its third attempt, and come out of something that occurred in Basra, Iraq.

The book also states: "Although world government had been plainly coming for some years, although it had been endlessly feared and murmured against, it found no opposition anywhere."

... or this one:

Feb. 9, 1950 - The Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee introduces Senate Concurrent Resolution #66 which begins: "Whereas, in order to achieve universal peace and justice, the present Charter of the United Nations should be changed to provide a true world government constitution."

The resolution is introduced by Senator Glen Taylor (D-Idaho), who later states: "We would have to sacrifice considerable sovereignty to the world organization to enable them to levy taxes in their own right to support themselves."

... or this one:

April 12, 1952 - CFR member John Foster Dulles [who later became Secretary of State], in speaking before the American Bar Association in Louisville, Kentucky, says: "Treaty law can override the Constitution. Treaties can take powers away from Congress and give them to the President.

They can take powers from the States and give them to the Federal Government or to some international body, and they can cut across the rights given to the people by their constitutional Bill of Rights."

Lisbon Treaty? Treaty of Rome? How about this one?

Feb. 23, 1954 - Senator William Jenner of Indiana says before the U.S. Senate: "Today the path to total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by Congress, the President, or the people.

We have a well-organized political action group in this country, determined to destroy our Constitution and establish a one-party state. It has a foothold within our Government, and its own propaganda apparatus. One may call this group by many names. Some people call it socialism, some collectivism. I prefer to call it 'democratic centralism.'

The important point to remember about this group is not its ideology but its organization. It is a dynamic, aggressive, elite corps, forcing its way through every opening, to make a breach for a collectivist one-party state. It operates secretly, silently, continuously to transform our Government without our suspecting the change is underway.

This secret revolutionary corps understands well the power to influence the people by an elegant form of brainwashing. We see this, for example, in the innocent use of words like 'democracy' in place of 'representative government.' "

... or this one:

October 24, 1975 - In Congress, 32 Senators and 92 Representatives sign "A Declaration of Interdependence," which states that "we must join with others to bring forth a new world order ... Narrow notions of national sovereignty must not be permitted to curtail that obligation."

Congresswoman Marjorie Holt refuses to sign the Declaration saying: "It calls for the surrender of our national sovereignty to international organizations. It declares that our economy should be regulated by international authorities. It proposes that we enter a 'new world order' that would redistribute the wealth created by the American people."

You might to look at the state of global economics, as of 1994. And finally - look at the current march of Obama towards the Presidency.

The quislings are everywhere, fundamental changes to society are now being spoken of openly and mentioned in the blogosphere to an extent unknown before 2008 and a rattled populace are open to Messianic ideas of a material nature. Those ideas will be the redistribution of wealth, such as it is into the hands of the non-enterprising fat cats and a meted out handout to the rest of the nanny state.

There is a stage in the socialistic movement which could be termed "the compassionate society", suggesting that to believe in hanging onto what you've worked to achieve is somehow wrong and that, out of a "spirit of love ", it should be redistributed to those with no intention of working for what they have. Correctly interpreted, it could be called The Politics of Envy.

There is just as much "compassion" in giving people opportunities, removing barriers to ideas and so on than in enforced "compassion". it is more sustainable. It says, "I'll give you the chance to get back on your feet and you can choose to either take that chance during your window of opportunity, not take it or else fail to take it." During this time, the onus is on the individual to climb out of the mire.

To me, that is practical love, practical compassion. Why do the politically correct assume that the go-getter can't feel pity or is indifferent to suffering? It's not so. Yet there has to be the possibility to do that. There has to be a free enterprise mentality to the country which supports initiative taking and offers incentives to do this.

That's why people committed to freedom of association, worship, speech, private enterprise and private property need to dig in now, to silently and not so silently resist the dead hand with every fibre of their being. We have our differences, often personal but these are as nothing compared to resisting the inexorable tide of state socialism now sweeping over the stone walls and threatening to swamp the land beyond and all who reside in it.

[quantum of solace] can james bring it to a sorrowing world

James Bond films have always sailed close to the wind in, say, product placement, going with new ideas or reverting to old ones, as well as weaving in triggers of various sorts.

An example of an idea which would have passed most moviegoers by but which was very well understood by certain sections of society at the time, was Gustave Graves' laser weapon, which just happened to have its control centre in the Icelandic wastes, the next stage after the brilliant pebbles. Note the motif of light-shedding power.

Similarly, this current movie plays on a sub-theme which never would have seen the light of day, [the morning star of publicity, so to speak], even three years back - the notion that the old money in Europe is crooked - then shies away from that by having the audience believe it's just an interlocked, monopolistic network of finance and free enterprise - greedy perhaps, in the light of the current RL revelations but basically just cold, calculated business in the end.

The real nature of it all, the actual agenda of state socialism [the nation being the European bloc rather than traditional identities], together with its very weird spiritual base, arcane priests et al, would hardly do for a Bond film - that would be more suited to a gothic horror flick with all its gory-orgies and mock-resurrection claptrap. And yet you only need return to the second last reich for the blueprint.

Dame Judy Dench's line, which is destined to be a classic, in response to Mr. White's: "The first thing to know about is that we have people everywhere," goes: "What the hell is this organization, Bond? How can they be everywhere and we know nothing about them?"

From internet gaming through to the present day crop of films, the themes have been getting darker and darker, as the noose tightens on the teeming masses worldwide and on their sustainable resources and this has led, albeit indirectly, to questions within the Bond afficianados' camp itself [or rather two increasingly separate camps].



There are those who prefer the wham bam, gadget saturated, Roger Moore style Thunderball rollercoster ride, with its wisecracking and humour ... and then there are those who prefer their Bond darker - the From Russia With Love, Connery/Craig Bond, [if not the Dalton persona], in the spirit of Licence to Kill.

Ask a roomful of Bond devotees to rate their favourites and you'll get, not so much a diversity of opinion at the top end but two schools of thought on the matter. This blog is caught somewhere in the middle between those two extremes. Yes to the exotic locations, yes to Q, the gadgets and one liners, yes to a bit more humour please but also yes to the grittier, less vacuous storyline.

IMHO, Casino Royale was not only the best Bond ever but was a film which could hold its own even were it not part of the franchise. This sequel looks pretty good but for how long can Bond sustain the scowling, revenge obsessed persona which Timothy Dalton, as the box office underlined in 1989, can only take so far before one tires of it?

To a comparison of the Bonds, Craig has every bit of the menace of Connery, every bit of the charm and the quick thinking, with added muscularity and athleticism. A friend said yesterday that it was not so much Bond himself as the script writers who make a Bond look good.

The answer is that they make him look good when they vaguely follow the Fleming magic. On their own, as they are in this film, it is a little harder to sustain the momentum. Very good but not necessarily great. Anyway, November 14th at London's Odeon West End might answer that question.