Notes and Comments No. 9

The press we deserve?

I was – briefly - a mature student (oxymoron?) at university in the mid-80s. To be honest I didn’t like it that much. I thing it was probably the biggest disappointment of my life. However, before I gave up on the academic world I noticed this growing intolerance. I do have an almost completed novel I wrote featuring some aspects of this – which I thought marked a deep insecurity and uncertainty in the minds of these young zealots.

This is the modern world? ‘When I express my horror, Nilab Mobarez looks at me rather pityingly and says: "This is only one case among so many. So many Afghan women suffer like this."’

Who is going to express their sorrow and regret for this?

Taking of the Dear Leader’s sorrow over slavery, here is an excellent (and long) article, taking apart the whole notion.

Comment For Free

I know I said I wouldn’t comment on sited like The Grauniad’s Cif anymore, But… I’m not well. So, for this, I wrote:

[Warning for those that feel they need it: this post contains a quotation which uses the ‘n***er’ word.]

The thing is – as Lenny Bruce pointed out so long ago – that insults only hurt if the insultee wants them to. As Bruce pointed out if we kept using these words until they became worn out clichés ‘'til nigger didn't mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.’ This has always struck me as a much more positive, pro-active approach to take, rather than the sharp intake of breath and cultural cringe we see so amply demonstrated in this current spat.

Instead, though, it seems we, as a society, have taken the completely opposite course to Bruce’s suggestion, with the result that the number of ‘insulting’ words seems to have grown exponentially. The result is that each utterance is greeted with more and more – seemingly mostly faux – outrage, especially those who see themselves as spokespeople for those ‘oppressed by hate language’, or those who have a vested interest in keeping such causes simmering.

But, of course, merely ignoring doesn’t give quite the glow of satisfaction, or burnish the liberal credentials quite so brightly, as rushing to the barricades, does it?

*

Oh, and here.

Right. Here we go.

1. No political parties and therefore no party whips.
2. Individual candidates in each constituency nominated, and seconded in ratio to the number of constituents, with a reasonable deposit paid to discourage fringe, loonies, nutters etc as much as possible, but still leave it as open as possible.
3. Each candidate is allowed to produce – at their own expense – a single leaflet outlining their stance, policy ideas and so forth, which can be delivered – once only – to each address in the constituency.
4. No TV, radio advertising, no helicopters, no ‘battle busses’.
5. Ballot paper features a ‘None of the Above’ option. Any candidate whose vote count is below the number of ‘None of the Above’ votes cast cannot stand again. If no candidate gets more votes than the ‘None of the Above’ amount, then the election is re-run in that constituency with a new list of candidates.
6. Once elected to the House of Commons there is a free secret ballot of all MPs to select a Prime Minister who stays PM until unseated by a Commons vote of no confidence or a general election – whichever is the sooner. He/she/it gets to choose a cabinet – all of which have to be approved by a majority in the house. They can only be removed by a vote of no confidence, general election or their own resignation.
7. Every vote in the house is – of course – a free vote.
8. Any MP can propose legislation, although the PM and cabinet members have priority. Legislation however, will only be carried forward if a majority of MPs vote in favour of that proposal.
9. Loose associations etc are allowed, but any MP discovered attempting to influence the vote of another MP using undue pressure should immediately be removed, barred from the house forever, and a by-election called.
10. Once a person has served in the Commons for a period - say survived five general elections – they are automatically moved to the upper House. The PM is only allowed two terms, as in the US system, before being promoted to the Upper House. The main function of the Upper House is to check each piece of legislation, say every 5 – 10 years to see if it is working as intended. If not, it is either repealed, or sent back for revision.

The only thing I haven’t worked out is how to put a stop to the current main problem in government, where a complete amateur who often knows little or nothing – the politician – is put – at least nominally – in charge of a massive department of government. Maybe we ought to have someone who knows what they are talking about and doing actually in charge of the department and the politician as a sort of representative of the interests of that department in the same way as they are supposed to represent the interests of their constituents.

*

Oh, and this too:

The vociferousness of those who claim to see a line of continuity between a mere smack inevitably leading to out and out assaults on the - assumed - innocence of childhood does seem more akin to an act of solipsism more concerned with beating the rush to claim the moral high ground, rather than a piece of well-considered analysis of the nature of childhood and the parental relationship towards it.

Likewise, the claim that ‘I’ve never had the occasion to smack my child - ever’ prompts the nagging thought that - perhaps, after all – these are those very parents whose offspring made the lives of all who encountered them such a memorable misery as they ran riot ‘only expressing themselves’ through airports and restaurants, or encountered them ‘working off their excess energy’ through the supermarket, the ‘high-spirited’ little angels who with a tenacious insistence involve everyone in their immediate locality, somewhat unwillingly, into their interfamilial dynamics, as - all the while - their dotingly self-satisfied middle-class parents beam in the smug satisfaction of a job well done.

Notes and Comments: No. 8

I haven’t been feeling too well of late – a cold that refuses to develop – hence the lack of new material here.

Don Berry at First Post reckons Tony Blair will have a legacy after all, in the dictionary:

Blair/verb intrans.

Make an intentionally false statement, tell a lie or lies.

For, as he says, ‘absolutely nobody believes what is being said. And this includes the person making the statement. The English language needs a new word to describe this trope succinctly.’

‘Faith’ schools are a bad idea, aren’t they? Of course, they are. Well, sign this then.

I got bored with watching international football during the World Cup 2006. Of course, England’s woeful performance didn’t help, but this could be the real reason. The thing is though, not being a fan or a supporter of any team means that these days I don’t really care about club football that much either. This is especially true at international club level, like the Champion’s League where – it seems – the same pool of players flit from club to club, and the stakes are so high that every team plays to avoid losing rather than playing to win.

Far from according respect, the multiculturalist censor treats people not as autonomous beings but as incapable victims needing special protection. The result is an auction of victimhood as every group attempts to outbid all others as the one feeling most offended.

From an excellent article by Kenan Malik at Eurozine.

Won’t Get Fooled Again

[This appeared as a comment on the Guardian CIF page. The link below is to the original article]

The very ubiquity of pop/rock has made it mediocre and its mediocrity has made it ubiquitous, eh? But, I think it goes a bit deeper than that. I know it is hard to explain to my teenage daughters what made the Sex Pistols seem so dangerous at the time, but more importantly, why that feeling of danger, rebelliousness, daring, was such an empty illusion. And why I hope I won’t get fooled again by the empty and hollow rock mythology that holds out dreams of freedom, promise and whatever adventure comes my way, but instead gives a slavish, mindless conformity just as deadening as those thumping disco beats I once so despised. For I used to think that pop was just prole feed for the mindless disco dancing lemming hordes, while rock dared to speak a truth to those of us that dared take a glimpse of what lay beyond those doors of perception. I was wrong; there is no real difference between them, except the thinking that makes it so. Rock was sold to us as something more than just prole feed - ‘three chords and the truth’, but what we got was just a watered-down faux Romanticism, a blend of narcissistic preening and banal truisms masquerading as a streetwise wisdom.

For just as the Left is seen as somehow more real, more authentic, more ‘of the people’ than the Right, rock music is seen as authentic, ‘from the street’, anti-elitist and real. This is, of course why, despite being a natural Tory Tony Blair - The ‘rock ‘n’ roll Prime Minister [snigger] - chose to associate himself with the ‘more romantic’ left.

Moreover, as rock has become ubiquitous it has, through its original fans growing into positions of power and influence (like Blair above), become a kind of conventional wisdom and a kind of prism through which the complex world is twisted into an easily-digestible, but distorted, simplicity. Rock stars musings upon the state of the world, for example, are given an attention far beyond their worth. These inane platitudes are treated with deep respect and reverence, and poured over for a wisdom usually only previously found in the great philosophers and sages.

While at the other end of the rock spectrum, we have the ridiculous bland pantomime antics of heavy metal, rap and Goth et al. Is there anything more sad and puerile than the cartoonish antics of Marilyn Manson and the outrage manufactured around him? This demonstrates that the ‘music’ that is given as the raison d’etre of most artists and bands is, in a strange way, merely often incidental to the pose, the persona, that style matters far, far, more than substance. The T-shirt more important than the song.

I suppose the inevitable question about all this would be 'Maybe so, but why does it matter? After all, it is only rock 'n' roll'. I suppose my answer would be is that by its very nature rock music is partial, insular and, ultimately, very conservative and it transmits that through itself. It can - vary rarely - offer the chance to transcend, which is what true art does, but it so often fails to even recognise the possibility of transcendence, let alone dare to reach for those heights.

I don't suppose it matters all that much if all you want to do is sing along to something while driving down the road, or while doing the washing up. But, surely, as you grow older and - hopefully - wiser, you really ought to be looking to go deeper, further, leave mere entertainment to the adolescents and dive into the deeper, wonder-filled depths of true art.

And, finally, think on this. Maybe the reason why Tony Blair has been such a failure, and big disappointment to many, is that despite growing older and greyer in the job, he seems to have become no wiser. I do believe there is a connection here between his oft-quoted love of rock music and his inability to mature and acquire wisdom and thoughtfulness.

Notes and Comments: No. 7

Back in the days when newsgroups were the centre of the internet world, there used to be – probably still is – a person called a ‘troll’. These people indulged in what we Britons call ‘a wind-up’. Deliberately trying to provoke a hostile reaction by posting something they know will be contentious, for example, posting disparaging things about religion in a religious group. Some groups, I seem to remember uk.misc was one, used to have actual ‘trolling contests’ where they would look for other groups to wind-up in this way.

As I’ve said previously, the various comment facilities introduced on some MSM sites are beginning to resemble these trolling contests with things seemingly designed to provoke reaction and counter-reaction. I suppose it is good business strategy. I don’t like playing games like that, so I decided to stop.

However, as those of us who have done things like give up smoking know, it is often quite difficult to give up completely first time. So, here I confess, and demonstrate, that I have had a slight relapse. Sorry.

In defence of Newell

Well, so what? A stupid person says something stupid. Why the big deal? If it wasn’t for all the ‘me-toos’ rushing to condemn him, I wouldn’t have even heard of this bit of nonsense. The same goes for the BNP bloke recorded by the BBC, if they hadn’t recorded it only the other handful of idiots in his audience would have heard him making an idiot of himself.

If stupid people think that something stupid said by another stupid person makes some kind of stupid sense then it is their stupid fault for being stupid enough to take it seriously. The rest of us should just shrug our shoulders, tut, and be thankful there is now one less person whose opinions we need to pay any attention to.

Why stop the Great Satan?

An exit strategy? Well, it so happens I have an early draft of Bush and Blair’s final message to the leaders of Iraq's various factions:

‘Well, we came in and did what many – if not most – of you claimed to want. We got rid of Saddam, and we offered you democracy. Instead, you opted for anarchy, chaos, self-slaughter and endless massacres. YOU created this mess, rather than joining with us to build a better country. You chose to piss all over our chips instead of working with us to build a better future for you. Furthermore, like, seemingly, everyone else in this region you look to blame us for the mess YOU have made of it. Well, quite simply, we’ve had enough. So, fuck you… we’re off. Bye.’

TV sex does not appeal [The comments on this one seem to be broken, I can’t publish it. Oh, well]

Well, I think we can take the absence of comments as some sort of justification of your thesis. C4’s problem is that people can – if they want such stuff – get real porn elsewhere so easily these days, rather than having to sit through the ‘educational’ or ‘human interest’ stuff (A bit like teenagers flicking through National Geographic in earlier decades looking for photos of naked tribespeople).

However, the bit in your article that brought me up short was another iteration of the seemingly common current meme that ‘American TV is good’. In earlier days, it was taken for granted that American TV was, at best just cheap filler used by the TV channels to fill gaps in the schedules. A common complaint of the time was that there was ‘Too much American pap’ alongside the perennial ‘too many repeats’. Apart from early Simpsons, very early South Park, and the - far better than both – Futurama, it seems to me that little has changed in the quality of American TV. It is all still superficial mind-numbingly dull dross intended to create a passive audience for the advertisers. Take, for example, the much-vaunted ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ where a tenth-rate Woody Allen clone (possibly on stilts) wanders around failing to be witty in various toe-curling embarrassing set-ups.

Judging by the dire offerings from the British channels of late: Spooks, Torchwood, Mrs Pritchard lumber to mind, the only possible reason why American TV can be regarded as having any worth is in comparison to British TV’s dire attempt to emulate the bland slickness of the American offerings in order to win some international sales. The Americans do it better, but it would be better not done at all.

I hoped that will be the end of this debilitating addiction to shooting my mouth off in public forums. However, there is a strange parallel universe where the MSM folks seem to live, especially the columnists. ‘Mad’ Bunting is an obvious example of one who seems to live in a world of her own creation, oblivious to the reality around her. For example, they seem to have either created, or bought into, this current notion promulgated by the government that bringing up children is somehow an arcane and difficult practice that can only be undertaken by a special, highly-gifted illuminati:

Listen to mother

From personal experience what every family with a first young child needs is a grandmother with plenty of common sense. The lessons learnt there should be enough to enable them to cope with any subsequent child.

*

Anyway, there is good news. It seems that the mobile ringtone market is collapsing. Unfortunately, it is technological progress in the ability to create one’s own tones that is causing the collapse, rather than any outbreak of good taste causing people to give up the annoying warbles for good. The only good ringtone I have ever heard, on some TV programme or other, is one emulating the ring of one of those every early big black bakelite phones from around the mid 20^th century. If I could ever be arsed to bother changing my mobile’s ringtone, I’d go for that one.

It is often said that Western society has lost faith in its post-Enlightenment ideals; things such as this ought to reignite that faith, and the belief that it is something the rest of the world ought to be entitled to too.

Ever since House of Cards I have quite enjoyed Michael Dobbs’ novels. Although he is sometimes as clumsy a writer as most other thriller writers can occasionally be, I always seem to enjoy his books. Now he has a new one where: “Ginny takes her revenge on her two-timing husband by vowing to make him Prime Minister." I look forward to it.

I am white, I come from the working class… and yet. While there are some things here I can recognise there are other implications that I’m not so sure about. While I have no time for snobbery (while at the same time being an unapologetic elitist), I find inverted snobbery just as bad. I think we should, if not sneer at, then strongly criticise the ‘idleness, vulgarity, xenophobia and ignorance of so-called "chavs" or "white trash".’

Notes and Comments: No. 6

That politicians – along with many other things – do not understand science has been obvious for quite a time now. What is more disturbing though is this report in the Telegraph that they often manipulate it for their own ends. Yet more evidence that our politicians, and civil servants too, are not up to the job they so often fail to do.

After a lifetime of gentle tolerance, I am starting to feel that it is a citizen’s duty to be rude, just to signal to governments that they have no right to enforce sweetness. Authority must police law and order and equal rights, but has no sway whatsoever over our thoughts, opinions and freedom to say disobliging things about each other. In return we — Christians, Muslims, humanists, whatever — have no right to take offence, put out fatwas or whimper behind the law’s skirts.

Libby Purves in The Times (again). I would just like to add a ‘me too’ to the above.

‘What we are witnessing is not the resurgence of religion, but its death throes.’ It is something I have said many times before about the apparent recent upsurge in religious inanities, now AC Grayling says it too.

The unresolved problems of division and tension in our society are not going to be addressed by burying them underground and forcing everybody to abide by an empty etiquette of tolerance. That is simply storing up more explosive trouble for the future. We need genuine tolerance that allows the expression of views with which you vehemently disagree, more clear opinions and sharp debate not less, a no-holds barred argument about the sort of society in which we want to live. That must involve the liberty to criticise Islam, Christianity or any other religion as wrong or even ‘wicked’ – the freedom for Griffin and the BNP to attack Islam, for Muslim radicals to denounce the Pope, or for Sir Elton John to call for a ban on all religion as homophobic. It also, of course, includes the freedom of religious types to tell the likes of me that we are going to hell.

Mick Hume at Sp!ked. There is more, and it is a good read too.

Notes and Comments: No. 5

NOTES:

Nothing notable to note.

COMMENTS:

I think I’m going to give up commenting on these comment sites like CiF. After reading this, I think I agree with him. Therefore, these below will be the last comments I make on the sites, but I will – instead - make them into ‘proper’ blog articles, or brief mentions in Notes & Comments, only here (linking back to the original articles, of course) on this site.

The root of terror is clear

My comment:

You can’t help smiling though when you see the all the Right-on Guardianistas rushing like lemmings to disassociate themselves from the American-Western-Hegemonic-Imperialist-Consumerist-Zionist* conspiracy and falling headlong into the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ mindset so common to the useful idiot. For it should be - at least – becoming obvious to even the most head-in-the-clouds utopianist groovy leftie that the ‘Palestinian Issue’ will never be ‘solved’ as long as it stays so useful to the vested interests in the area (and no, I don’t mean the ‘evil Americans’ or the (just as) ‘evil Israelis’) on both a domestic and international strategic level.

The Palestinians are just the pawns (yet more useful idiots) in a much bigger game, a diversion. While it is, undoubtedly, tragic for the Palestinians - and the Israelis too, of course – to be caught up in all the pointless and useless violence, we should not allow ourselves to be fooled into thinking it is a root cause of anything other than its own pointless self-perpetuation.

*sorry if I missed anything out – for example, I’m taking it as read that we ALL realise this is all down to the problems inherent in the male-dominated patriarchy that is the military-industrial hegemony behind the deliberately provocative creation of Israel.

Why voting is a waste of time

My comment:

Although, the danger is – as New Laborg have amply demonstrated – that when the basics are more or less sorted, as you rightly say, the politicians start casting around for something else to do in order to justify their continued existence. This results in all the unnecessary, pointless and often counter-productive legislation they have produced over the last few years.

Also the politics of management leads to us being saddled with the sub-middle-management mediocrities we are currently encumbered with in all the parties, who – it seems – quite simply don’t seem to understand that we don’t vote for them because we don’t want, or like, them.