Mr Eugenides

Quote of the week

2009-11-07T09:48:00.000Z

The great thing about shamelessness is that in an amnesiac culture, it works.

Amis on Benn

2009-11-06T08:39:00.001Z

While on the subject of great political anecdotes, here's some classic, classic Kingsley Amis, courtesy of the Ragbag:

[Tony] Benn I have run into only once, early in his career, when by a misunderstanding he arrived on my doorstep expected but not heralded by any name. The door was one of those with a glass panel affording a preview of the caller. At the first sight of the present arrival the thought flashed into my mind, 'Who is this English cunt?' The distinguishing adjective is important. There are Scottish cunts, there are even Welsh cunts, and God knows there are American cunts, but the one in question could have come from nowhere else but this green and pleasant land. Something about the set of the lips.

Other guests arrived at the same time and my silent question went unanswered for the moment. I offered drinks. Someone asked for a gin and tonic. I turned to the cunt. 'Same for you?' He reacted much as if I had said, 'Glass of baby's blood? It 's extra good today,' and somehow in that moment I knew him, recognised him from television. He settled for bitter lemon, 'with plenty of ice, ' he added firmly. (I once heard him say unequivocally, also on television, that his sole interest in life was and had always been politics, which to my mind should debar anybody from standing for Parliament. Even Ted Heath has his yacht and his choirs).

Using divining rods to find explosives

2009-11-05T11:10:00.002Z

Nice to see that British exports are, er, booming:

Iraq’s security forces have been relying on a device to detect bombs and weapons that the United States military and technical experts say is useless.

The small hand-held wand, with a telescopic antenna on a swivel, is being used at hundreds of checkpoints in Iraq. But the device works “on the same principle as a Ouija board” — the power of suggestion — said a retired United States Air Force officer, Lt. Col. Hal Bidlack, who described the wand as nothing more than an explosives divining rod.

Still, the Iraqi government has purchased more than 1,500 of the devices, known as the ADE 651, at costs from $16,500 to $60,000 each. Nearly every police checkpoint, and many Iraqi military checkpoints, have one of the devices, which are now normally used in place of physical inspections of vehicles.[...]

Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.” [...]

Aqeel al-Turaihi, the inspector general for the Ministry of the Interior, reported that the ministry bought 800 of the devices from a company called ATSC (UK) Ltd. for $32 million in 2008, and an unspecified larger quantity for $53 million. Mr. Turaihi said Iraqi officials paid up to $60,000 apiece, when the wands could be purchased for as little as $18,500. He said he had begun an investigation into the no-bid contracts with ATSC. Jim McCormick, the head of ATSC, based in London, did not return calls for comment. [...]

Last year, the James Randi Educational Foundation, an organization seeking to debunk claims of the paranormal, publicly offered ATSC $1 million if it could pass a scientific test proving that the device could detect explosives. Mr. Randi said no one from the company had taken up the offer.

ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.

Don't it make ya proud?

(h/t: Foreign Policy)

UPDATE: Unity has much more, as ever.

David Kerr, Roy Jenkins, and the perils of carpetbagging

2009-11-05T08:27:00.001Z

Tom Harris is having some more fun at the expense of the SNP candidate in Glasgow North East, David Kerr, who was in the news this week when it emerged that he has a tendency to claim in campaign leaflets that he was born locally - no matter which constituency he is standing in.

Mr Kerr's latest "gaffe", if one can call it that, was to ask a girl behind the fish counter at Asda what it was she was selling, while behind him Alec Salmond put his head in his hands. Cue much guffawing from political opponents.

As political missteps go, it's hardly up there with Gerald "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" Ford; in fact, it probably says more about the desperation of Labour to hold on to this seat than it does about the SNP candidate, who from all accounts is a sensible and smart chap (except for all the independence stuff. And his membership of Opus Dei. And - well, you take my point).

But all of this does remind one of the pitfalls of parachuting candidates into pivotal constituencies, particularly in a town as canny as Glasgow. One of my all-time favourite political anecdotes concerns the 1982 Hillhead by election, for which the newly formed SDP selected their leader, Roy Jenkins, who had not hitherto been renowned for his connections with the city.

Strolling around the west end of Glasgow, the urbane Jenkins entered a newsagent's and, sighting the Asian shopkeeper, went to proffer a handshake. "So, how long have you been here, then?", asked Jenkins, to which the owner replied evenly, "Longer than you".

Cartoon of the day

2009-11-05T06:55:00.002Z

A round of applause, Dave Brown.

"The Sovereignty of Parliament": Cameron needs to go back to university

2009-11-04T16:35:00.010Z

As every schoolboy knows, or at least used to, Parliament is sovereign and cannot be overridden, or bound by its predecessors. So, when David Cameron announced today that Parliament would be invited to pass a "Sovereignty Act" restating the primacy of our national assembly, he was merely reminding us of something that we already knew:

We will also introduce a new law, in the form of a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill, to make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country, in our Parliament.

This is not about Westminster striking down individual items of EU legislation.

It is about an assurance that the final word on our laws is here in Britain.

Except that every schoolboy is wrong, and so is David Cameron. That's not bloggertarian hysteria, by the way: it's First year Law at every university in the land.

"Some public comments on the decision of the Court of Justice, affirming the jurisdiction of the courts of member states to override national legislation if necessary to enable interim relief to be granted in protection of rights under Community law, have suggested that this was a novel and dangerous invasion by a Community institution of the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament.

But such comments are based on a misconception. If the supremacy within the European Community of Community law over the national law of member states was not always inherent in the EEC Treaty it was certainly well established in the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice long before the United Kingdom joined the Community. Thus whatever limitation of its sovereignty Parliament accepted when it enacted the European Communities Act 1972 was entirely voluntary. Under the terms of the 1972 Act it has always been clear that it was the duty of a United Kingdom court, when delivering final judgment, to override any rule of national law found to be in conflict with any directly enforceable rule of Community law. [...]

Thus there is nothing in any way novel in according supremacy to rules of Community law in those areas to which they apply"

- Lord Bridge of Harwich, R v Secretary of State for Transport ex parte Factortame Ltd [1991] 1 AC 603, 658

Which brings us back to the old philosophical conundrum; is it possible to "make clear", to use David Cameron's words, something which is not true?

There must be plenty of lawyers in the Shadow Cabinet. If our media are truly the guardians of democracy that they claim to be, I assume they'll be asking them if they've heard of Factortame - as even the most hungover, unshaven, wearing-the-same-pants-for-the-third-day-in-a-row law student has - and whether they think it was Mr Cameron or the noble Lord that was talking out of his arse. I'm not holding my breath.

By way of postscript, I remember asking my European Law professor whether there was any way of overturning the decision, or otherwise reasserting the sovereignty of Westminster. "Oh, yes", he replied breezily. "All you have to do is repeal the 1972 European Communities Act".

Baby on board

2009-11-04T11:32:00.000Z

Never one to allow a bandwagon to rumble past, this blog is now available in a low-graphics mobile-friendly version for those of you who, like me, can't be arsed to get an iPhone:

http://mreugenides.mofuse.mobi/

So now you can get Mr Eugenides while you're on the move. The only question, I suppose, is; why you would bother?...

Cleaning up Parliament: rate the Kelly recommendations

2009-11-04T07:06:00.012Z

Today sees the release of the Kelly recommendations for cleaning up the Augean stables at Westminster, and the Sunlight Centre for Open Politics has created a handy little checklist to help you evaluate whether Sir Christopher's proposed reforms are truly Herculean in their scope, or more Huttonesque (click on the graphic to download the PDF).

As you'll see, we can rate Kelly on a scale from the best-case scenario, "Radical Overhaul", right on down to complete whitewash. I can't really disagree with any of the Sunlight Centre's proposed reforms, all of which seem sensible and most of which strike me as absolutely necessary; my only quibble might be with the suggestion for a "low threshold for recall by-elections for censured MPs", and even then I'd be delighted with such a procedure if the technicalities were properly thought through. I'd also have liked to see something in there about kicking Tony McNulty in the nuts, but then I'm just a dreamer at heart.

What'll actually happen, though? My cynic's tenner is on the recommendations covering "The Basics" when it goes into the Parliamentary sausage-making process, but being a distinctly "Soft Touch" by the time it comes out. These people will fight to the very last penny of your money.

+++ Cameron : Treaty Position Will Be Clarified This Week +++

2009-11-03T11:25:00.002Z

Graph of the day

2009-11-03T10:31:00.004Z

OECD:

More at Burning Our Money.

2009-11-03T08:42:00.001Z

No surprise, this:

What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators?

This paper (PDF) seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates," and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. It finds that with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line.

The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither.

Socialism kills. Pass it on.

(h/t: Tim Blair)

Scum, every last one of them

2009-11-02T12:50:00.010Z

So, MPs expenses.

I bet a lot of you are fucking sick of this by now. "Give it a rest", you're thinking. "The system is being cleaned up - rules will be tighter in future - the story is essentially over." And because you are a reasonable person, you probably read this, and thought - yes, that's a reasonable solution to the problem.

A wide-scale revolt by spouses of MPs may force the watering down of proposals to ban parliamentarians from employing family members.

One possible solution is to ban new MPs from employing family members but to permit existing employment arrangements to continue – the same policy as adopted by the European Parliament after this year’s elections in June.

Fair's fair, eh? We have "clarified" the rules, and so it's only reasonable to keep existing arrangements in place, surely? You know, employment legislation and suchlike. But, in return, the new rules will prevent family members from working for MPs. OK? OK.

But that is to reckon without the extraordinary shamelessness of these people:

A controversial Tory MP at the centre of the expenses scandal has put a second daughter on the public payroll. Nadine Dorries has handed just-graduated Jennifer an estimated £28,000-a-year taxpayer-funded job in her Commons office – weeks after complaining that the girl couldn’t find work.

MPs will be banned from employing family members under reforms following the expenses scandal. But Dorries, forced to apologise after revelations about her expenses, took on 22-year-old Jennifer before the new rules came in.

Eldest daughter Philippa, 24, has also previously worked for the Mid-Bedfordshire MP.

In July, Dorries – nicknamed Mad Nad even by fellow Tories – stood up in the Commons to bleat that Jennifer had completed her degree but faced being jobless.

The mother-of-three said: “My daughter graduated today, but she is facing a grim future. Although she will not find employment, the interest on her student loan and those of all her fellow graduates will be racking up while they try to find work. We have known for the past year that she would graduate and probably not find employment.”

But then the 52-year-old installed Bournemouth University graduate Jennifer as full-time maternity cover for her House of Commons PA.

Mark my words; if you make the mistake of treating these bastards reasonably and shaking them by the hand like honest people, they'll be away with your watch, credit cards and the ring you got off your fucking high school sweetheart in the blinking of an eye.

I've said it before, and I'll repeat it now; the likes of Nadine Dorries are a liability to this modern, all-singing, all-hugging Conservative Party. I am sick and tired of otherwise sensible people defending her, just because she posts zany shit on a blog a couple of times a week. One could even forgive her having the brains of a duck if she at least possessed a minimal quantum of shame, but clearly even that is beyond her.

Guido is right; we now live in a borderline nepotistic kleptocracy. But it doesn't have to be this way. This isn't Tsarist Russia, to quote Malcolm Tucker, and it's not the fucking Dimblebys. If she's so fucking qualified, how come she can't go and earn £28,000 working for someone she doesn't have to call "Mum"?

Jennifer is only maternity cover, so presumably her arrangement is time-limited. But I wouldn't be surprised to see a whole rush of these guzzling pigs shoving their runts' snouts into the trough just to lap up all of the swill before the cut-off date comes and the taps are shut off.

Think I'm being too harsh? Too extreme? Here's Nad's fellow Tory MP, David Wilshire (my emphasis):

Mr Wilshire... was forced to resign after paying more than £100,000 in expenses to his own company... The Tory MP used his office expenses to write to all his constituents defending his claims and attacking The Daily Telegraph.

Voters in his Spelthorne constituency were surprised to receive a two-page letter, written on Commons notepaper and sent using taxpayer-funded pre-paid envelopes, in which he said that he was “devastated” at having to stand down. [...]

Mr Wilshire wrote: “The witch hunt against MPs in general will undermine democracy. It will weaken parliament - handing yet more power to governments. Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers.”

No, reader, that is not a massive typo. I did not mash my fingers randomly against the keyboard and accidentally bring up a combination of letters that looks like one of the most offensive , not to say ludicrous, comparisons you could possibly imagine. Our MPs are the Jews, the Palace of Westminster is Auschwitz, and Sir Christopher Kelly is Adolf Eichmann.

The contempt these people have for you is boundless. If you still doubt it: why?

"The Chemicals (Hazard Information and Packaging) Regulations 1993"

2009-11-02T10:15:00.000Z

See if you can guess what commonly used workplace substance requires, under EU law, to be accompanied with a five-page "Product Safety Data Sheet" the first time it is ordered by a company. Here are some clues:

* “Prolonged skin contact may defat and dry skin leading to possible irritation and dermatitis. Eye contact may cause smarting and irritation.”
* “If contact of any material with the eye occurs, irrigate the area affected thoroughly with cold water.”
* "Skin contact: wash affected area thoroughly with cold water.”
* “If confined to the mouth, do not swallow; wash out the mouth with water… If swallowed, drink plenty of water and medical advice.”
* “Protective equipment is not normally necessary. Gloves should be worn where repeated or prolonged contact can occur. Avoid contact with eyes. Safety glasses should be worn”.

Go on, guess.

The answer is here.

Expect anti-scientific nonsense now that swine flu vaccinations have started

2009-11-02T08:12:00.005Z

I'd say this is a safe bet from Debora MacKenzie:

People are finally getting pandemic flu vaccine, and serious amounts of the stuff will be rolling off production lines in coming weeks. The handful of countries that will get some are launching one of the most ambitious mass vaccination programmes since Salk defeated polio.

And I hereby predict that all pseudo-scientific hell is about to break loose.

Why? People get ill all the time for various reasons. Some even die - it happens. Inevitably there will be some people who do this just after being vaccinated. This is especially likely as among the first people to get the vaccine will be some who are already in a delicate condition, and at greater risk of having a severe or lethal case of this flu: diabetics, asthmatics, the very young, the pregnant.

The anti-vaccine brigade will jump on those cases and flog them for all they are worth as "proof" that vaccines are lethal/poisonous/a plot by some government or industry to achieve world domination. Count on it. And the rampant misinformation that is already, tragically, deterring even people who should know better from getting this vaccine will get worse.

It's worth reading the rest. I'm still of the view that the "pandemic" stuff is wildly overhyped, of course, but that's quite different from the unscientific garbage that will no doubt be paraded in what passes for our media over the next few weeks and months.

Keep your eyes peeled to the Daily Mail, reader. Me, I'm on Melanie Phillips - metaphorically, of course.

2009-10-30T16:00:00.000Z

It's quite scary to realise that I have now been pumping out this horseshit for exactly four years today. In that time just about everything has got worse, including the quality control on this blog. My fury at the idiocy and malevolence around us has barely abated, though, and the rage continues to enmisten my eyes.

Anyway, thanks are due to you, the long-suffering reader, for sticking around this long, even if only in the Micawberish hope that something would turn up. Let's hope that in another four years the Tories have solved all the country's problems and the rage is finally spent. Something tells me not to hold my breath...

Essentially silly

2009-10-30T11:30:00.002Z

If anyone ever succeeds in creating a Comment is Free Random Article Generator, I suspect this is the sort of stuff it will start turning out:

Obama's boys-only basketball games are an example of the unconscious discrimination that works against women

An instant contender for David Thompson's series "Classic sentences from the Guardian" (do headlines count?), and it turns out - against all expectations - not to be a spoof. Authoress Sady Doyle writes,

When Barack Obama held an office basketball game and invited only male employees to participate, it sparked anger, simply because it looked so familiar.

It's tempting to view Hoopgate as essentially silly

Sadly, this last phrase is followed not by a full stop, as it would be in any sane world, but rather another thousand or so words.

Burglary FAIL

2009-10-30T07:30:00.002Z

This story is a joy.

Police say guilt was written all over their faces.

Police received a call Friday night that two men with hooded sweatshirts and painted faces had tried to break into a man's home in Carroll, Iowa.

When police stopped a vehicle matching the caller's description blocks away, they were stunned by the men's disguises.

There were no ski masks or stockings pulled over their heads; instead, Matthew Allan McNelly, 23, and Joey Lee Miller, 20, streaked their faces with permanent black marker.

Carroll Police Chief Cayler told CNN the strange disguises made it easier for his officers.

"We're very skilled investigators and the black faces gave them right away"

Perhaps slightly unhappily phrased...

"Exceptional hardship"

2009-10-29T10:56:00.000Z

In his peerless study of the corruption of modern politics, The Triumph of the Political Class - a book which I strongly urge every reader of this blog to buy, borrow or steal - Peter Oborne identifies one of the most unlovely attributes of the new political class as being their striking (and entirely unfounded) sense of entitlement. Time and again, as Oborne demonstrates, our political lords and masters act in ways that suggest that they do not see themselves as bound by the same rules as ordinary people.

The book contains a number of telling examples, most notably John Prescott's defence to charges that by shagging his secretary in his office he was engaging in behaviour directly prohibited by his own departmental guidelines, and which would have got any other public sector employee the sack ("the guide applies to civil servants, not ministers"). Oborne, then, would no doubt enjoy this minor classic of the genre, from Tory MSP Jamie McGrigor:

A TORY MSP has been banned from driving after repeatedly speeding, despite trying to escape a ban because he was a politician.

Sir Jamie McGrigor claimed his constituents would suffer “exceptional hardship” if he lost his licence.

You've got to shake your head in wonder at the solipsism of an MSP - a list MSP, mind you - who can argue this with a straight face. But it's a common trait of those elected to office, whatever their background or party; they believe that their exalted status entitles them to special treatment. Well, it doesn't; and the sooner the well-lunched classes at Westminster, in particular, absorb this message, the better.

One of Gordon Brown's few attractive features is his relative probity (cleaning bills notwithstanding) and the refreshing lack of grasping, freebie-hunting greed that so characterised the pair that occupied No.10 before him. It is a shame that he doesn't have the will, the backbone or the political capital to enforce on his MPs the same basic rules of honesty that we "ordinary people" take for granted.

And now MPs of all sides are ganging up to fight the new standards that are, belatedly, being imposed on them; ready to go as far as wife-swapping, it seems, to keep the gravy flowing. Well, as I have said before; excellent. The more they fight, the more they discredit themselves; and the harder it becomes for their apologists in the media to defend their troughing. Finally, even the most politically unengaged will be able to see that the only thing short of a terrorist attack guaranteed to unite politicians of all stripes is the prospect of their slush funds being depleted. Funny, that, isn't it?

As for the good folk of the Highlands and Islands, they survived quite well before Holyrood came along to "represent" them, and you suspect they will take Sir Jamie's temporarily reduced mobility with the granite-jawed stoicism for which they are renowned. Be brave, my Teuchter friends.

Minor instances of hypocrisy

2009-10-29T08:39:00.002Z

You really could have seen this one coming:

The head of the Green Party wastes more energy at her offices than any other party leader, according to a new survey.

An audit of MP's offices measuring heat loss found the workplace of Caroline Lucas pumps twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the average family.

She came bottom out of the four main political parties [you what? - E], prompting accusations of "hypocrisy" because of the Green Party's policy of encouraging other people to improve energy efficiency.

I suppose we should be grateful to Caroline Lucas for doing her bit to combat global cooling; after all, she is only emulating her Nobel Prize-winning cousin from across the Atlantic. Who can forget Al Gore's tireless contribution to the cause of carbon emission?

I can't find it in myself to be worked up about what is, after all, utterly unimportant. The only thing worth taking from this inconsequential example of political class hypocrisy is the timely reminder that the guiding mantra of these people is not "do as we do", but "do as we say".

"Revamping" a turd

2009-10-28T11:15:00.002Z

I am indebted to a correspondent for alerting me to yesterday's Scottish Labour front bench reshuffle - an event that might otherwise have passed me by, which I think we can all agree would have been a minor tragedy.

As always where Scottish Labour politicians are concerned, the phrase "polishing a turd" springs to mind. And not just any turd; certainly not a fresh, malleable turd ripe with possibilities, warmth and life, even if only of the nasty bacterial kind. No, this is more like a wizened, sun-bleached turd unloaded from the anus of some long-dead pooch fed on remaindered Lidl dogfood and rat droppings, an ossified reproach to the authorities that should really have shovelled it into a skip months ago. But a turd it still, recognisably, is; and seeing as the BBC has seen fit to use the inadvertently hilarious word "revamped" to describe the new lineup, "revamping a turd" we shall henceforth use as our term of art.

The full shadow front bench is here, but don't bother clicking on the link because it's dull as all hell at the other end. Really, all you need to know about the new Labour team is that this woman is Labour's shadow Health Minister:

They say that every nation gets the politicians it deserves, and we must, I suppose, give credit to Scottish Labour for selecting, in Jackie Baillie, a woman who so richly exemplifies the central public health problem with which her department would be required to wrestle. Now, Mr Eugenides is no stranger to the dessert trolley, but then again he is not going around telling people to get off the their fat arses and make a salad. Ms Baillie - each of whose chins is said to have its own postcode - will be doing just that, and so on symbolism alone this appointment has to be judged an epic fail.

Of course, none of this would matter if Jackie Baillie had intellectual heft in proportion to everything else. It is my sad duty to report that this is not so. Judge for yourself, in this clip from an interview defending the lovely Wendy Alexander from the brutish attacks that ultimately brought her low:

Nor is la Baillie the only dim bulb in view. As Jeff notes, Richard Baker has not exactly set the heather alight in his time at Justice - to put it as gently as I can - and of course any team that includes the perenially awful Cathy Jamieson is going to be instant relegation fodder. Regarding Iain Gray himself, perhaps the kindest thing I can say about him would be nothing.

As for the appointment of Pauline McNeill to Culture, I initially thought this was a gigantic joke being played on a gullible media - McNeill being famous, if such is the word, principally for greeting news of her election in 2007 with a bellowing rant into the microphone which had even seasoned Glasgow Labour-watchers gasping in disbelief.

But never let it be said that your scribe is anything but fair. It turns out that Pauline McNeill has a significant cultural hinterland, as this clip from an ersatz Hiroshima commemoration in Glasgow this August amply demonstrates.

If these are the people threatening SNP hegemony north of the border, I don't think Eck should be taking down the curtains in Bute House any time soon.

Arnie's subliminal message for the California State Assembly

2009-10-28T08:12:00.000Z

You've got to admire this:

It was hardly a bill of cosmic import, but Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s AB 1176 would have helped the Port of San Francisco with some financing issues. It’s the kind of bill that legislators offer on behalf of their cities all the time -- and generally, they are non-controversial. This one was the same -- no substantive opposition, it passed both houses easily -- and normally, the governor would sign it with little fanfare.

But no: Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill -- and sent Ammiano and the legislators a remarkable veto letter. The letter says nothing about the substance of the bill; in fact, the language is really convoluted and it’s hard to figure out what the gov is really saying. [...]

But wait -- there’s a real message, an actual missive from the Gov to Tom, embedded in this text. And it’s not hard to find -- in fact, it’s hard to believe it could have been a coincidence...

That'll show those San Francisco girlymen...

(h/t: Massie)

The worst political campaign ad of all time?

2009-10-27T07:54:00.001Z

Well, I don't know about that, having sat through some pretty risible efforts in my time, usually involving Liberal Democrats. But this campaign ad from Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine makes a powerful case for being just the worst, the most risible, the most toe-curlingly horrendous attempt at persuading the electorate that I've ever seen.

A campaign spokesman said the ad "demonstrates John Oxendine's commitment to using innovative, cutting-edge genre to communicate serious messages in creative mediums".

(h/t: The Dish)

Quote of the day (UPDATED)

2009-10-26T09:01:00.005Z

Clive James:

It's a nasty word to be called, denialist, because it calls up the spectacle of a fanatic denying the Holocaust. In my homeland, Australia, there are some prominent intellectuals who are quite ready to say that any sceptic about man-made global warming is doing even worse than denying the Holocaust, because this time the whole of the human race stands to be obliterated.

Really they should know better, because the two events are not remotely comparable. The Holocaust actually happened. The destruction of the earth by man-made global warming hasn't happened yet, and there are plenty of highly qualified scientists ready to say that the whole idea is a case of too many of their colleagues relying on models provided by the same computers that can't even predict what will happen to the weather next week.

In fact the number of scientists who voice scepticism has lately been increasing. But there were always some, and that's the only thing I know about the subject. I know next to nothing about climate science. All I know is that many of the commentators in newspapers who are busy predicting catastrophe don't know much about it either, because they keep saying that the science is settled and it isn't.

Do read - or, better still, listen to - the rest.

UPDATE: I see that NASA have taken it upon themselves to get some headlines by running a "rebuttal" to a new Hollywood disaster movie, "2012":

Contrary to what you may read on the Internet, the world is not going to end in 2012. A rogue planet named Nibiru is not on a collision course with Earth. And a solar flare won't toast the planet.

It's all fiction, though the makers of the film "2012" may lead you to think otherwise.

"I don't have anything against the movie. It's the way it's been marketed and the way it exploits people's fears," NASA scientist David Morrison at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., told Discovery News. [...]

"I think people are really, really worried about the world coming to an end. Kids are contemplating suicide. Adults tell me they can't sleep and can't stop crying. There are people who are really, really scared," he said.

"People are very gullible," he added. "It's a sad testimonial that you need NASA to tell you the world's not going to end."

Which is ironic, given that the man who has done most to market the theory that the planet really is headed for fiery doom works for, um, NASA...

Parris on Free Speech

2009-10-24T09:06:00.008+01:00

I promised I would write no more on a certain fringe quasi-fascist party and their brief moment in the sun, so by way of postscript, I'll merely reproduce this excerpt from today's magisterial Matthew Parris column, and observe that I wish I could write this well, this fluently and this sensibly.

Wasn’t this ... an absolutely obvious, straightfoward, open-and-shut case? Was there nobody to restate, with the relaxed confidence that philosophical certitude should bring, the only available position for a modern British liberal: that this is a free country in which a range of highly diverse opinions may be held and, if held, published, subject to the law? Full stop. Yes, full stop; for heaven’s sake, full stop. [...]

I acknowledge (the pro-censorship brigade are right in this) that offering a platform to the BNP may give the party a boost. Nor do practical liberals like me believe in free speech regardless of its effect; they would not support free speech if they expected it to lead permanently to great harm.

But nor do they believe in free speech only when confident that their preferred opinion will win the immediate argument. They know that free speech can help bad ideas to gain ground as well as good. But they have enough faith in the persistence of human reason to believe that in the ebb and flow of argument, and over time, the better argument will eventually prevail.

And — crucially — they believe that free speech will strengthen and sharpen the critical faculties of the whole citizenry, producing a society less susceptible to herd mentality. In short, they do not deny that free speech can hurt, but believe that in time it makes a people stronger.

Never were truer words published.

Those who complain that the BNP's support may go up, not down, as a result of Question Time are missing the point utterly. It is not the BBC's job to tell us what to think, though God knows they try hard enough on a range of the great issues of the day. Nor is it their job to try to depress the vote of any particular party, however richly that party may deserve electoral oblivion and widespread obloquy.

Rather, it is their job to present information and opinion to us in as dispassionate and impartial a fashion as they can, and allow us to choose between competing ideas and policies. Wrong to give scumbags a platform? Even if so - even if I agreed with that - who is to decide who are the scumbags, and who are not? The Electoral Commission? The controller of BBC1? David Dimbleby? The editors of Liberal Conspiracy?

No, I think not. I think I shall choose, thank you very much, and I think that I want more information with which to make that choice, not less. I do not require an array of gatekeepers and firewalls to protect me from scary ideas, and I choose to hope and believe that most people, most of the time, are adult enough to merit similar respect. If you do not share this view then that's fair enough; but I submit that, whatever you are, you are no liberal.

If we are serious about empowering people in our politics, and genuinely believe in the liberty of the individual to make their own choices about their own lives, then we surely have to have the intellectual confidence to put our money where our mouth is. If not, then frankly we may as well pack up and go home.

Quote of the day

2009-10-23T15:04:00.003+01:00

Daniel Larison, writing about the rudderless Republican Party in the US, but with a lesson that is universal:

Cheney’s speech is useful as an example of how government activists always operate. They propose a scheme that is costly, unnecessary and probably dangerous to the common good, their successors attempt to scale back or modify the wasteful baggage with which they have been saddled, and then allies and members of the previous administration wail about the “abandonment” of this group and the “betrayal” of that one to defend the scheme they concocted, when no one was benefiting from the scheme in the first place and never would have benefited. Indeed, more often than not the scheme will hurt those it is supposed to aid, its costs will be far higher than originally projected, and it will create a number of negative consequences for which the schemers are unprepared and never considered.

Where Republicans are concerned, this activism tends to be limited to military schemes and foreign policy boondoggles, but it applies just as well in other areas of policy. The constant ratchet effect this has ensures that no new scheme or proposed spending can ever be eliminated without tremendous effort and expenditure of political capital, and the end result is to make the state larger, more activist and an entity with its own set of interests increasingly divorced from the people it governs.

Indeed.