Mr Eugenides

The last post

2010-10-30T00:01:00.002+01:00

This post marks a couple of milestones in the life of this blog. It's the fifth anniversary of this collection of enraging musings from your average potty-mouthed Greek baby; five years of abuse, vitriol, incoherent fury and the occasional, very occasional, gem of a gag. It's been A Journey - if that doesn't make me sound too much like il cunto di tutti cunti - and I couldn't have done it without you. Well, obviously, I could; but it would have been at least 13% less fun.

It's also the last post I'll be writing.

Regular readers will have noticed a drop-off in posting these past few weeks and months, and those that have appeared have often been one-liners, links to other sites; lazy blogging. After a bit of soul-searching, I've decided to discontinue the blog.

Partly this is due to busy-ness in the real world, but that's only half the story. The other half is a noticeable dropping off in my levels of rage since the prime raison d'etre for that fury were ejected from office in May. I share the scepticism of some readers towards many aspects of the new government's platform, and worry that their reforms will be too timid, their policies wrong-headed, their instincts far from libertarian. I worry, in short, that they will disappoint us, as I know you do too.

But what I don't have now is that same hate. The last administration filled me with disgust; the mere sight on my telly of a Charles Clarke, a John Reid, a - God forgive me for even typing the words! - Patricia Hewitt, sent me flying into almost uncontrollable loathing. And without fury, without rage, without spite, this blog is nothing, really - or at least, not what it was - because the way it's written, it is set up for polemic, not placid discussion.

In as far as I owe you anything, it is, I would say, not to confect outrage over things which don't really upset me, not to try and find hate where none exists. I'm in a more placid place, and I think that the country's got at least a fair chance of becoming a better place with that horrendous shower out in the cold; and that's as good a place as any to leave it.

I don't entirely rule out resurrecting this blog at some future point, maybe in something like its current form, or a different incarnation; under the pen name I chose all those years ago, or under my real name. If that happens, I hope you'll come and find me, and we can start calling a new generation of political leaders dickheads together... because something tells me they always will be.

I've been Mr Eugenides, and you've been a wonderful audience. Good night, and good luck.

Quote of the week

2010-10-27T12:46:00.004+01:00

"The winners will return to the presidential palace, and the losers will go back down the mine!"

- Chile's President Sebastian Piñera, after captaining his football team to a 3-2 win over the rescued Chilean miners in a friendly game on Monday.

"Undermining the market"

2010-10-26T13:49:00.002+01:00

Hard to know what more to say about this (spotters badge for Michael):

Cherie Blair has sold her husband's signature on eBay for £10.

She advertised a signed "bookplate" page to fit copies of Tony Blair's autobiography A Journey. It was originally offered for £25 but sold for £10.

Needless to say, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation...

Her spokeswoman said: "Cherie Blair was cross that people were selling Tony Blair's signature when you can get one free.

This, mind you, from a woman who once signed a copy of the Hutton report into the death of Dr David Kelly to raise money for the Labour Party.

She was trying to undermine the market and as soon as someone bought it, she refunded it straight away to make the point," she said.

Riiiiiiiiight.

Her sister's been in the news, too: Lauren Booth recently converted to Islam in a bizarre, Yvonne Ridley-esque moment of ~~lunacy~~ spiritual awakening while on a visit to Iran (let's hope for her sake that she never tries to convert back):

She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom.

‘It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy [...] Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60.

60 pages in 6 weeks? Wow, sounds like you're finding it a real page-turner, Lauren...

‘I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,' she said. ‘The strange thing is that since I decided to convert I haven’t wanted to touch alcohol, and I was someone who craved a glass of wine or two at the end of a day.’

Refusing to discount the possibility that she might wear a burka, she said: ‘Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?’

What a fucking family.

Godwin's Law alert

2010-10-26T09:27:00.002+01:00

Polly Toynbee wins this week's Godwin Award quite effortlessly (my italics):

Rent was always the glitch in the benefit system, and Beveridge never found a logical answer. Well, here at last is a final solution he never considered: put all poor people in distant dumping grounds where nobody wants to live because there is no work, then call them workless scroungers, lacking in aspiration for the children they have taken out of class to throw together in schools where nobody's parents work.

That's right: capping housing benefit at £400 a week - that's £20,000 a year, by the way - is like the Holocaust.

Quite extraordinary.

"Now they work for us"

2010-10-22T08:49:00.000+01:00

Reproduced without comment.

"Axe Wednesday"

2010-10-20T09:12:00.004+01:00

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

- Margaret Thatcher

Thought for the day

2010-10-18T10:46:00.002+01:00

It is important to have principles, of course; we wouldn't want unprincipled politicians. But these principles must be so deeply held that they never quite rise to the surface.

- The peerless Jamie Whyte, in the indispensable Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking.

Caught in the cookie jar

2010-10-17T12:25:00.004+01:00

Bloody hell, talk about the perils of a sweet tooth:

An Iranian judge has sentenced a man convicted of robbing a confectionery shop to have one of his hands cut off, Iranian media report.

Fuck me! No more fingers of fudge for you, Mahmood!

The judge also sentenced the man to one year in prison.

This is just a beautiful "fuck you", isn't it? You've just been sentenced to have your fucking hand chopped off - it's the worst moment of your life, you're staring at the wall in shock... and then the judge says, almost by way of afterthought, oh, yeah, and you're doing a year in chokey, too. Poor bastard won't even be able to pull his own pud; he'll be begging the guy raping him in the showers to give him a reach-around...

Police arrested the man in May after finding $900 (£560), three pairs of gloves and a large amount of chocolate in his car, Fars news agency said.

Dear God... I think they caught the Milk Tray Man...

Observation of the day

2010-10-15T15:01:00.003+01:00

Universities in England face funding cuts of £4.2bn in the coming Spending Review, an e-mail leaked to the BBC News website suggests.

Universities UK head Professor Steve Smith wrote to vice-chancellors saying this week's Browne Review set out figures that "confirm our worst fears". He says they signal a £3.2bn or 79% cut from teaching and £1bn from research in next week's Spending Review.

The government said it could not comment. [...]

Responding to the claim, the general secretary of the UCU, Sally Hunt, said: "It is hard to believe that any government could contemplate making £4.2bn cuts to higher education given that it generates massive economic growth.

"Cuts of this magnitude will leave many cities and towns without a local university and our students paying the highest public fees in the world."

My observation is this: that any organisation which has a "General Secretary" may safely be ignored.

Where's Backbone?

2010-10-14T14:41:00.022+01:00

This is something of an instant classic. The Washington Post, along with several other national papers in the US, pulled a cartoon strip last week from veteran cartoonist Wiley Miller, whose "Non Sequitur" strip is syndicated to over 800 papers round the country.

His sin? A cartoon (right; click to embiggen) in the style of the old "Where's Wally?" childrens' books ("Where's Waldo" in the US) in which you have to hunt for the eponymous stripey character in a drawing stuffed with hundreds of other figures. Only Miller's cartoon was entitled "Where's Muhammad?".

Inevitably, newspapers from New York to LA took fright and binned it. But of course, not because they are scared of the backlash from lunatic radical Muslims: oh, no...

[Boston Globe] Deputy managing editor Christine Chinlund said via e-mail: "When a cartoon takes on a sensitive subject, especially religion, it has an obligation to be clear. The 'Where's Muhammad' cartoon did not meet that test. It leaves the reader searching for clues, staring at a busy drawing, trying to discern a likeness, wondering if the outhouse at the top of the drawing is significant — in other words, perplexed."

As Brian Micklethwait points out at Samizdata today, it may be time to reclaim the word "Islamophobia" for those who really merit it: those who piss their pants in fear at the very prospect of upsetting anyone who professes the Muslim faith are a far larger threat to our way of life than those who actually hate and fear Islam. It is they who are phobic about Islam, not those of us who believe that we should not bend and warp the fabric of our liberal democratic system to accommodate the mediaeval superstitions of a small minority - Christians, Muslims, pagans, whatever.

If you're not convinced by that, try this thought experiment for size:

Said Alice Short, an L.A. Times assistant managing editor: "If they had produced a 'Non Sequitur' cartoon that said 'Where's Jesus?' I probably wouldn't have wanted to run that either."

Yeah, my hairy, dangling Greek balls you wouldn't have, Alice. You wouldn't see what all the fuss was about, you'd mock the ignorant red-staters who might get offended, and then you'd run it anyway, probably with a degree of malicious pleasure. And I'd be the first one to support you, because people who complain about cartoons are stupid.

But here's the punchline, the reason why I'm even writing about this in a week of disgracefully light blogging. The "Where's Muhammad" cartoon didn't actually have Muhammad in it. Miller didn't draw the prophet into the strip: he merely namechecked him in the title. Never mind newspapers not publishing cartoons that depict the prophet Muhammad; newspapers will now not publish cartoons that do not depict the prophet Muhammad! We really are through the looking-glass.

"That's all they saw," Miller told FoxNews.com of the word Muhammad. "[Editors] didn't see the satire was on them, of being petrified to run anything related to him. But this whole thing has just gotten so silly over the years. It's something I can't lay off. It's my job as a satirist to point out the stupidity in the world. And the editors fell right in line with proving how stupid it is."

Amen to that, Wiley. The moment you can't satirise something you become less free. And boy oh boy, is there a lot of stupidity in the world right now.

Curious headline of the day

2010-10-13T11:18:00.000+01:00

Liberal Conspiracy:

Pessimism about future ‘lowest on record’ now

Surely this is good news?

Kerry McCarthy: online guru

2010-10-13T10:16:00.000+01:00

Perhaps someone needs to show Kerry McCarthy how to set her Twitter location, which is currently set to a very irritating "iPhone: 0.000000,0.000000":

If only there was someone in the Labour Party who understood Twitter. Oh, wait...

Great media moments of our time

2010-10-13T07:07:00.001+01:00

Rupert Murdoch is a great man.

Britblog #284: The read it or we'll blow you up edition

2010-10-12T17:42:00.006+01:00

Good afternoon all, and welcome to the two hundred and eighty-fourth iteration of the Britblog Roundup which will, I am happy to announce, remain free at the point of use to couples earning up to £87,000 a year, and very expensive to everyone else.

Indeed, let's start with Child Benefit - a masterstroke by the Tories according to some, a clustertramsmash according to most others. Too Much To Say For Myself insists that the cuts will hurt women most of all: Chris Dillow responded with a study demonstrating that middle-income women tend to spend the money on themselves. This one will, I suspect, run and run.

Meanwhile, Better Nation thinks that the Tories are busily engaging in expectations management, softening us up for the axe then wielding the scalpel. Given that the spending review is likely to return public spending to 2006 levels, I personally think there is a lot of hysteria going on over fairly little. But we shall see.

Let's stick with matters feminist for the moment. Stroppyblog is critical of the stereotypes pushed on little girls in the clothing departments. Philobiblon has a very interesting post up about a recent meeting of the Fawcett society which discussed the question of what a female future might look like. One possible outcome is more feminists like Jonathan Dean; rest assured his feminism is not of the Ali G variety.

Over at FemAcadem, meanwhile, Melaszka wants to marry Benedict Cumberbatch (who is, I learn, a real person) but is concerned that this is altogether too Jane Austen for any self-respecting feminist. Reader, go over and help her out. And finally, Sarah Cope looks into the economics of breastfeeding. I must confess at this point that I don't see for the life of me why local councils need to fund women to breastfeed their babies - but I am not here to editorialise, merely to direct you to the week's best blogging, and it's a thought-provoking read, which is what the BBRU is all about. Do go and read.

Two blog posts bemoaning women who are setting the cause of feminism back by decades, lastly: Eoghan O'Neill on a particularly daft conversation overheard on a train, and HarpyMarx on the appalling, appalling, appalling, appalling Nadine Dorries.

While we're on the subject of setting back causes, this was also the week that the 10:10 campaign brought out their by-now infamous exploding schoolkids video promoting emissions reductions.

While the sight of David Ginola being blown to smithereens was not entirely unpleasing, various bloggers thought it was a spectacular own goal - among them Cabalamat, Bright Green and myself. Only the Dude took a contrary view, though I wonder if he still thinks it was "a successful piece of attention-grabbing agitprop", given the speed at which sponsors seem to be jumping ship.

Greenies do seem to be concerned that their message is not cutting through as clearly as it was. Here's a discussion of a recent pro-cyclist campaign and its failings; here's a description of the Earth Centre near Conisborough, now in such disrepair that it is used as a location for filming TV shows set in post-apocalyptic wastelands. A sign of things to come?

Against this backdrop, Aled-Dilwyn at Political Dynamite asks the broader question: how to achieve meaningful change?

Some days I wake up thinking that changing the system from within is the only way to bring a greater mass of people along for the ride; on other days, usually after watching Question Time, I wonder if there is any point even contemplating reformism, and start calculating how to assassinate the entire world elite in one high octane sniper spree. Neither of these thoughts is particularly useful.

Au contraire, A-D. Au contraire.

Now a quick grab-bag of assorted links that I couldn't quite shoe-horn together with an artful segueway:

Better Nation takes issue with Fraser Nelson for suggesting that Alex Salmond should have kept his mouth shut about the death of a Scottish aid worker in Afghanistan this week. So, for that matter, did one of Fraser's employees. Rest in peace, Linda.

A Place To Stand replies to Salmond on the closing down of the Forth Road Bridge, a big issue up here in Alba if you weren't aware.

At the other end of the country, Diamond Geezer contemplates road closures of a different kind; the Zil lanes being set up for the 2012 Olympics. (See? I managed a link of some kind, at least.)

Questions to which the answer is Erm, Maybe, #001: Time for another EU Constitutional Convention?

My Burgundy, Your Burgundy answers that most vital of questions: what's the French for "mangy fox", and - in the absence of such knowledge - how do you avoid giving the impression that you want to eat the blasted thing?

Earthenwitch has been growing dreadlocks. Your scribe tried doing that once, but lost patience after a few months: even Greeks don't have that much hair on their backs.

For the avoidance of doubt, this is not my back.

An entirely uncategorisable post next. Grand Theft Auto: Little Frigging On The Wold. Warning: some subtle sexual euphemism was used in the production of this piece.

Meanwhile, Labour has finally awoken from its slumbers following the election of whasisname. Brian Barder has some advice for the new guy, and also provides some talking points for fighting Tory "myths" about Labour's role in the debt crisis. And the Daily (Maybe) crunches the numbers from Labour's mayoral primary and concludes that, despite the success of Red Ken, Labour is slowly strangling what is left of its left wing.

Lastly and far from leastly, I am delighted to announce that Random Acts of Reality will soon be dramatised on TV. It'll surely be one to watch, even if Benedict Cumberbatch is not cast in the lead role. Until that happy day when Mr Eugenides is similarly immortalised - perhaps as some form of pornographic cartoon on Men & Motors, or with my own version of Question Time, in which politicians are put on a podium and pelted with rancid dung until they resign - we shall have to content ourselves with Matt Wardman's October rankings for political blogs, courtesy of Wikio.

Next weekend's roundup will be at Cabalamat, please send your submissions to britblog [at] gmail.com. Until then, as the man said: Toodle-pip!

Tax and spend Twittiocy of the day

2010-10-05T08:49:00.004+01:00

I'm beginning to get the hang of this Twitter thing. The beauty of it, I think, is that people's bullshit is condensed into capsule form.

Here, for example, is Stuart King, a failed former Labour candidate, tweeting his verdict on Osborne's proposed child benefit cut for those on more than £44,000 to the evident delight of a number of approving followers (including Tom Harris MP):

Anyone else glad Lib Dems are in coalition to stop Tories pursuing regressive and unfair policies?

So there you have it, reader: taking more from richer people in tax is "progressive", but giving them less in benefits is "regressive".

How does that work, then?

2010-10-03T17:00:00.004+01:00

OK, so I'm definitely going to regret this: but Mr Eugenides is now on Twitter. I still don't understand it and suspect it's a grotesque waste of time, but then again I said the same about the Trojan Horse.

You can find me, or follow me, or whatever the fuck it's called, at http://twitter.com/Mr_Eugenides. We will conquer the world, my friends... 140 characters at a time. We shall bore each other in McNugget form.

10:10 Campaign: Epic, epic PR fail for green movement

2010-10-01T19:30:00.007+01:00

Quite a mesmerising lack of judgement today from the 10:10 Campaign, a fake environmental charity (paid for by you, natch) that is agitating for everyone to trim their CO2 emissions by 10%. The message in this video, helmed by the increasingly superfluous Richard Curtis, is commendably direct: we're all in it together, we all have to do our bit, etc etc etc. Either that or, you know, be executed. No pressure.

Needless to say the video has now been removed and a mealy-mouthed apology posted on the website, but too late: it's gone viral and everyone is laughing at them. Talk about the shit heard round the world.

It really wouldn't do to be too po-faced about this, let alone pretend outrage - some people have gone so far as to hyperventilate about how this film "tacitly advocates the public execution of unbelievers", which I think is pushing it a bit - so I'll merely note that this continues a long trend of eco-lunacy (bought and paid for by the taxpayer) which relies for its impact on trying to shock or scare us - or, better yet, our children. More to the point, it just isn't funny. Or maybe I just don't get the joke?

No, I don't think it's me. I think it's them. Dicks.

The geek inherits the scorched earth

2010-09-27T08:48:00.001+01:00

I see that the new puppet of the unions, Ed Miliband, has started as he means to go on - by lying through his teeth.

My aim is to show that our party is on the side of the squeezed middle in our country and everyone who has worked hard and wants to get on.

You fucking what? You're the one that squeezed them, you bug-eyed dickhead. You're the one that has loaded "hard-working families" with taxes they can't afford to pay and shunted billions of pounds of debt onto their children. Really, what a fucking cheek this guy has.

If that sentence made me mist over with fury, this one just made me chuckle:

I do not intend to be the leader of the Opposition for a day more than is necessary.

Well, that's just dandy, but I couldn't give a flying fuck what Ed "intends", because his length of tenure in that job is, thankfully, not up to him but to us.

I stand by my view that this guy is IDS with hair, with all the charisma of a plate of curried shoe leather. In as far as he seems to have any "ideas", they seem to have been designed by a computer program to tickle the erogenous zones of the rank-and-file fuckwits otherwise known as the Labour Party faithful (and the born-again, like Sunny), and even then both the MPs and the membership rejected him. Say what you like about David Cameron, but at least he's the most talented politician in his family.

Still, if I and many others are exultant that Labour appear to have been sold a lemon, it is refreshing to see that some people just don't learn from fucking experience. Here is the pantomime dame of British social democracy casting her lustful eye over the new 'un:

How will he look across that deadly dispatch box on Wednesdays? Younger, brighter, insurgent, hungry to score. [...]

With one bound he has won the generation game, leaving the ghosts of Blair, Brown, Mandelson and their damaging memoirs in a bygone era. All those wretched warnings not to move a millimetre away from the Blair doctrine are gone with the wind. Now he is free to write whatever he wants on the clean page he has created.

Ah, yes, you are hungry to score, aren't you, my Viking warrior? Oh, yes, ~~Gordon~~ Ed, my Norse god...

Liveblogging the Labour leadership announcement (UPDATED)

2010-09-25T16:17:00.007+01:00

UPDATE: Mhuh? What time is it? Bloody hell, it's after five! I must have dozed o-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

aaaaaaaaaaaaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Those Labour leadership odds in full

2010-09-24T15:19:00.002+01:00

Ways not to open a blog post at Liberal Conspiracy #1064

2010-09-24T10:56:00.002+01:00

Here:

I voted for Ed Balls, and

Stopped reading.

National stereotype of the week

2010-09-23T13:25:00.003+01:00

Even by French standards, this is a bit hasty: surrendering to terrorists before they have even made any demands...

Headline of the week

2010-09-20T09:55:00.001+01:00

BBC:

Arrest over Pope helicopter laser

2010-09-12T10:29:00.000+01:00

I'll be taking a typically ill-deserved holiday for the next few days - blogging will therefore not be a thing until later next week. Best wishes to all.

Advertisers who should really bugger off

2010-09-12T09:56:00.000+01:00

[h/t: Dish]