[thine enemy] no reason not to sup with him

If you're trying to work out what makes someone tick, one way is to look at the things he [she] is interested in and the choices he [she] makes, e.g. which football team. In most cases, this latter might not be indicative at all but in the case of more 'on the edge' clubs, it can be.

For example, my club was Wimbledon and that was not for any geographic reason but for their physical play, for Kinnear's defying of the odds, for Fash, Vinny and the opportunistic style of play. For the way they placed 6th in the top league without having any actual right to be there in many people's eyes. Next season they did it well again, confounding people's expectations.

In Australia, my team was/is Geelong and pundits joke that some people are born to be disappointed; for such people, G-d created the Geelong Football Club. On a roll, they were unbeatable, with sheer poetry in their style of play - everyone conceded that - but when they were bad [maybe 20% of the time] they were woeful and could be beaten by a junior grade side, for example, losing last year's flag after trouncing everyone all season.

That's very much me. When serious - not bad at all. When an arrogant smarta-s- ... woeful.

Another very strong trait running through Hob is Rugby Union - the principle that on the pitch, you aim to knock the other man's head off and give no quarter whatsoever, to stretch the rules to the limit and still keep within the spirit of the game. However, you shake hands after it and then, the moment you're off the pitch, you socialize with your enemy, have a few drinks and do the post-mortem.

The idea of holding a grudge, even if he took you out of the game, doesn't compute in the Rugby man's mind. Mind you, the bstd'll get his next time.

This came through when I used to don the colours and help out at the general elections. At one particular election, the woman on the other side and I hit it off immediately on so many issues but not over the key issues which divided us. We each put our assistants in for an hour and went off to have afternoon tea together.

Then we came back and resumed hostilities. Somehow, I quite like that idea but I don't expect everyone to agree with me on it.

[wonko's missal] reply would be interesting

I wonder if Wonko would object to me printing this letter?

Dear Mr Burnham,

I just listened to you talk about the English NHS for 5 minutes yet you didn't mention the word England or English once. You talked about "the NHS", "the health service" and "the country" but all the time you were talking about the English NHS, the English health service and England.

You are an English Secretary of State for an English government department talking on national TV, broadcast to the whole of the UK and didn't once point out that you were only talking about England.

I wonder how many Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish people you worried that they might be losing their free prescriptions, free hospital parking and expensive life-saving cancer drugs that your department says we can't afford in England and how many English people you misled into believing that the rest of the UK would be helping to plug the gaping hole in the British budget when that's not the case.

Is there any chance of you using the word England at any point during your job as Secretary of State for the English NHS?

Wonkotsane

This might be of interest to the English, from Wyrdtimes.

[doing the hack] and sinking the boot

The other face of Eve

Grauniad [H/T Chris Dillow]:

Former MP Oona King ... accused Flint of exploiting her sexuality: "She shocked a lot of women in the party by often posing in a fashion that implies she's more interested in the way she looks than the policies she presents."

Mail:

‘There was a spontaneous reaction in the FCO Press office when the news broke that she was off,’ said one official. ‘There was a loud cheer and applause. You could say Caroline was not the most popular of Ministers. They didn’t really respect her.’

Officials say fiery Ms Flint fell out of favour at the Foreign Office only weeks after arriving because of her ban on biscuits.

‘Serving some biscuits with coffee is the default setting at the FCO for meetings and gatherings,’ said the official. ‘But with Caroline, instead of tea or coffee and biscuits, it was just tea or coffee.

‘The staff were just bemused by it. She would fly off the handle if it was ignored and someone smuggled a few biscuits in. I don’t think she had anything against any particular biscuits such as ginger snaps or Bourbons. It was all biscuits, full stop.

‘To be honest, people thought she was vain and assumed she was just watching her figure and didn’t want to be tempted. That is no reason to stop the rest of us having a harmless treat. After all, there are precious few treats in the Civil Service.’

A spokesman for Ms Flint confirmed that she had ordered officials to stop serving biscuits at her meetings – but denied it was anything to do with weight-watching.

‘They used to bring up all these biscuits every time you had a cup of tea and nobody used to eat them. So Caroline said, “Can we cut the biscuits?”

‘She also thought they were being charged internally for them so she was saving the taxpayers’ money, but she wasn’t being tight-fisted.’

[political quadrant] rather than lines or circles

Google seems to run these little 'spotlight' things every so often because posts of yore make a reappearance and over a few days, they get lots of visits. Such is the current fate of The Political Quadrant, currently outstripping any other post.

In the quadrant below, statism is seen as control oriented and includes religions. Something like satanism purports to be libertarian but actually it aims for complete control by the dark side. So this is centred horizontally. It would have been nice to put in the "politics of envy" that's close to our current situation in Britain.

Miller 2.0 says :

This is an original contribution to the debate, and one well worth considering. However, as a social democrat myself, I'd ask that people consider the proposition that the state is not always counterposed to freedom, and that sometimes state action can be freedom's most powerful guarantee.

Looking back over the old quadrant below, it needs to be revised in some respects, e.g. Tory and it doesn't take into account that one can be extreme on some things and moderate [corrected] on others.



My political compass:

.

[pawlenty] what chance

Dave Cole drew our attention to this:

Tim Pawlenty, the GOP governor of Minnesota, announced at a press conference today that he will not seek a third term. Plenty of people (including myself) have been talking about Pawlenty as a GOP challenger to Obama in 2012. Finishing his job in 2010 would give him time enough to run ‘unencumbered’.

I'm not so sure:

Pawlenty is once again considered a potential candidate in the 2012 presidential election. In a poll taken only a day after the 2008 election, Pawlenty garnered only 1% support among five other political heavyweights (which included Sarah Palin, who captured 64%, Mike Huckabee with 12%, and Mitt Romney close behind with 11%).

[thought for the day] tuesday evening

I was such a foolish girl - girls are foolish, Mr. Satterthwaite.  They are so sure of themselves, so convinced they know best.  People write and talk a lot about women's instinct.  I don't believe, Mr. Satterthwaite, that there is any such thing.  There doesn't seem to be anything that warns girls against a certain type of man.  Nothing in themselves, I mean.  Their parents warn them but that's no good - one doesn't believe.  It seems dreadful to say so but there is something attractive to a girl in being told anyone is a bad man.  She thinks at once her love will reform him.

[Agatha Christie, 1934]

Any comment, people?