Notes and Comments: 05/05/2007

Excellent analysis, using the published biographies, of what the phenomenon called Tony Blair actually might be. It seems that what defines him may very well be his religion, which is probably why I’ve found him deeply distasteful from the very beginning. Man without a shadow.

A rather disturbing tale of the way that film makers, toy makers, junk food companies and so on are all working together. Another disturbing thing I find in Toy Story in The Grauniad is this:

"It would have been a dream," a Hasbro spokesperson says, had it been possible to make a live-action Transformers movie years ago, when the original hardcore fanbase - now 25 to 35 years old - was the right age to flock to cinemas and toy shops. As it is, the nostalgia factor should bring some of those original fans into cinemas….

I find it more than disturbing to think that people (male, most likely) of the 25-35 age-group would still be interested in the toys of their childhood enough to get involved in all this. But these days, it seems, people just do not grow up and wallowing in nostalgia for a childhood they never seem to want to leave is seen as something… well… ordinary, not pathologically disturbing.

Back in the early Stone Age, I used to have a Walkman. I stopped using it because I didn’t like the way it insulated me from my surroundings, took me out of the world around me and made me oblivious. I now have a – quite new – MP3 player, but I only use it for listening to audiobooks and – my great love – Shakespeare plays, which don’t tend to cocoon me in the same way that the constant music did. Anyway, it has stopped me becoming quite this sad and desperate.

My comment on this:

Quite simply political parties should be solely financed by membership fees alone. No state funding, no 'donations', nothing else at all. Furthermore, those membership fees should be fixed at such a rate that all in the party pay the same from the lowliest envelope-stuffer right up to the party leader and the millionaire 'philanthropist' (This may have to be capped by law to prevent shenanigans).

So then the parties will - if they want to survive - have to concentrate on building up a solid mass-membership and being responsive to the demands of that membership in order to still receive the funding from those members.

Not only will this approach 'reconnect' the parties to the electorate and reinvigorate their moribund states, it will also reduce the influence of those who currently control the party purse strings and reduce the power of lobbyists.