Showing posts with label Gandhi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gandhi. Show all posts
Friday, August 19, 2011
Layer 479 . . . Towns, Cities, Communities, Big Lunches, Urban Riots, Gandhi, Hazare, Tim Smit, Heligan, Totnes and Naomi Klein
.
There's been an interesting series of programmes on BBC TV this summer on the subject of towns. As something of an amateur geographer it was compulsory viewing for me, in spite of the irritating presenter - his false bonhomie & chumminess, and his ridiculous shortie double breasted macintosh that he'd insisted on wearing throughout the series and had about nine pockets and two epaulettes too many.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013n5gl/TOWN_with_Nicholas_Crane_Totnes/
Previous programmes have focused on towns such as Ludlow and Scarborough - last night's was on Totnes, which is becoming well known as the first of the 'transition towns' in Britain. The key idea in these programmes is that it's possible to live more on a human scale in a town, which is less of an anthill than a city, but has more to offer than a village.
http://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/content/transition-town-totnes-newsletter-54-may-2011
This final programme, however, floated the idea that people need to rediscover a sense of community within cities, or within particular communities within cities. A typical London borough, therefore, such as Hackney or Islington or Tottenham, can have its own sense of community, and within those boroughs there are specific areas that can generate their own sense of community - Stoke Newington, Clapton, Dalston, Canonbury, Barnsbury, Angel, etc.
We can even take it down to street level - and I've written in the past about brilliant street parties that have taken place in my own locality - in response to the brilliant Tim Smit's idea of a "Big Lunch". http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2010/07/layer-333-radio-4-reasons-to-be.html
In a typical street of Victorian terraced houses there as so many people and so many families it's possible to generate an amazing sense of community if people live there long enough. There are many wonderful streets where people love living and do indeed stick around for many years.
Tim Smit was also featured on TV this week in a superb documentary - beautifully filmed and edited - about the Lost Gardens of Heligan. It was Tim who discovered the abandoned estate in Cornwall, and who brought it back to life - which he subsequently wrote a book about. It was also Mr Smit who raised the money for and built the Eden Project. He's quite a guy.
http://howtomakeadifference.net/2010/06/14/tim-smit/
http://www.edenproject.com/media/big-lunch-3d-art-pr.php
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/06/food-big-lunch-production
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tim-smit-breaking-bread-together-will-break-down-community-barriers-1658946.html
................................................................................
The last time I went to see Naomi Klein speak at a public meeting was a few months ago in Totnes. She was there to study the Transition Town concept. Unfortunately the meeting was spoiled by a few typical locals who insisted on turning the meeting into something resembling a hall full of small discussion groups so that they could listen to themselves talking rather than pay attention to what the sublime Ms Klein had to say. Ordinarily I wouldn't have cared particularly - and if the 'workshops' and the 'brainstorming' had turned out to be dull then I'd gladly have gone down to the nearest pub and left them to it. Unfortunately, when the guest speaker lives in Canada and rarely gets to England, let alone Totnes, then it just seemed like a missed opportunity. What a pity there were no civic leaders present who had the presence of mind to stand up and say to the gathering that they really could listen to one another at any old time, whereas Naomi Klein was in town just for the day . . .
Naomi wrote a brilliant piece this week on the subject of England's urban riots:
Looting with the lights on
We keep hearing England's riots weren't political – but looters know that their elites have been committing daylight robbery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/17/looing-with-lights-off
Argentina's mass looting was called el saqueo – the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country's elites had done by selling off the country's national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatisation deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity package. Argentines understood that the saqueo of the shopping centres would not have happened without the bigger saqueo of the country, and that the real gangsters were the ones in charge.
England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn't theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behaviour.
This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G8 and G20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable. They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuition fees, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatisations of public assets and decreasing pensions – mix the cocktail for where you live. And who is on television lecturing about the need to give up these "entitlements"? The bankers and hedge-fund managers, of course.
This is the global saqueo, a time of great taking. Fuelled by a pathological sense of entitlement, this looting has all been done with the lights on, as if there was nothing at all to hide. There are some nagging fears, however. In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported that 94% of millionaires were afraid of "violence in the streets". This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear.
Of course London's riots weren't a political protest. But the people committing night-time robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious. The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off. Locked away in a ballooning underclass with the few escape routes previously offered – a union job, a good affordable education – being rapidly sealed off. The cuts are a message. They are saying to whole sectors of society: you are stuck where you are, much like the migrants and refugees we turn away at our increasingly fortressed borders.
Cameron's response to the riots is to make this locking-out literal: evictions from public housing, threats to cut off communication tools and outrageous jail terms (five months to a woman for receiving a stolen pair of shorts). The message is once again being sent: disappear, and do it quietly.
At last year's G20 "austerity summit" in Toronto, the protests turned into riots and multiple cop cars burned. It was nothing by London 2011 standards, but it was still shocking to us Canadians. The big controversy then was that the government had spent $675m on summit "security" (yet they still couldn't seem to put out those fires). At the time, many of us pointed out that the pricey new arsenal that the police had acquired – water cannons, sound cannons, teargas and rubber bullets – wasn't just meant for the protesters in the streets. Its long-term use would be to discipline the poor, who in the new era of austerity would have dangerously little to lose.
This is what Cameron got wrong: you can't cut police budgets at the same time as you cut everything else. Because when you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance – whether organised protests or spontaneous looting. And that's not politics. It's physics.
.................................................
The correct response to the political situation, as I've said so many times, is peaceful, non-violent protest and demonstration - walk like an Egyptian. Talk like Tahrir, or Tiananmen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahrir_Square
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_2011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989
Gandhi was the first to use non-violent mass protest as a means of making political demands. There's a new movement happening in India based on Gandhi's ideas and example. And a man called Anna.
Indian corruption: Gandhi's mantle
Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement is posing an increasingly serious challenge to the Indian government
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/17/anna-hazare-gandhi-india-corruption
Editorial
The practical and sometimes dirty business of power-seeking and deal-making has in the past been countered in Indian politics by periodic impulses to transform society root and branch. This dualism was famously embodied in the divide between Nehru and Gandhi, partners but also rivals in the Indian independence movement.
The two men had profoundly different ideas on the direction in which India ought to go, Nehru seeing a future India as a great industrial and military power, while Gandhi wanted a society which would keep the worst aspects of modernity at bay while transcending caste, class and religious differences.
Anna Hazare, the 74-year-old former soldier whose anti-corruption movement is posing an increasingly serious challenge to the Indian government, has certainly borrowed both style and technique from the Mahatma. He wears plain white clothes, if not the actual homespun on which Gandhi insisted. Like Gandhi, he fasts. Like Gandhi, he goes to prison – and sometimes refuses to come out. Like Gandhi, he has a model village, in his case in his home state of Maharashtra. Like Gandhi, he is against tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. Like Gandhi he has mobilised large numbers of Indians, many thousands of whom have been demonstrating in New Delhi and other cities after Manmohan Singh's government made the mistake of arresting him two days ago. Anger at corruption, of both the grand and the petty kind, has never been so intense.
The basic issue is simple. Mr Hazare and his followers want a powerful anti-corruption agency established, something that various governments had promised in the past. The prime minister pushed legislation to create such an agency, but without giving it powers to investigate the senior judiciary and the prime minister's office, or to pursue the lower- level officials who make life an expensive hell for Indians seeking driving licences, passports and other documents. Mr Hazare will not accept this, while Mr Singh says democracy is being subverted.
Mr Hazare does not have, or aspire to, anything like Gandhi's stature. He does not confront, as Gandhi did, his followers' complicity in social evils, an aspect of his career underlined by the subtitle – His Struggle With India – of a recent book on Gandhi. But Mr Hazare has found an issue – and is exerting a leverage which on balance must be good for India.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/anna-hazare
.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Layer 190 Wikis, Books, Philosophy, Depression, Sadness, Rage, Hate, Deceit, and Psychos
.
It's very possibly a landmark moment in your life when, as a user and supporter of Wikipedia, you do your first edit on the site. This was Oxzen's yesterday:
“And think not that you can direct the course of love,
If it finds you worthy, directs your course”
(Kahlil Gibran – The Prophet)
Changed to:
“And think not that you can direct the course of love,
For love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course”
http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Prophet/Love
Interestingly this stanza was quoted by Oxzen in Layer 38 – Licence To Kill.
Also in Layer 38 there was a mention of the film “Waltz With Bashir”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltz_with_Bashir
On a site called Wikirank it's possible to see that: The Wikipedia page for Waltz with Bashir was viewed 25,487 times in the last 30 days. http://wikirank.com/en/Waltz_with_Bashir
That's pretty amazing, I reckon. Unbelievable in fact.
Yesterday I followed through with my rediscovery of The Prophet on Wikilivres and took a look at the phenomenon that is Wikilivres:
The first thing I saw on that site was the Autobiography of Gandhi. Two hours previously I'd been putting some books away, noticed my copy of that particular book, and thought to myself I really must get round to finishing reading it.
http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experiments_with_Truth
----------------------------------------
From there I stumbled across Wikisource:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
I had a very quick browse on the site and found a page for Keir Hardie's "Can a Man be a Christian on a Pound a Week?" which has nothing at all on it.There are, however, lots of brilliant things there by Bertrand Russell, for example, whose superb autobiography I read many years ago.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Bertrand_Russell
I'm now going to get round to reading the following:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Political_Ideals
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Problems_of_Philosophy
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Mind
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_China
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Education_%28Russell%29
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Russell-Einstein_Manifesto
Sadly the following aren't yet available:
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Proposed_Roads_to_Freedom:_Socialism,_Anarchism,_and_Syndicalism&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=On_the_Value_of_Scepticism&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Why_I_Am_Not_a_Christian&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=How_to_Become_a_Man_of_Genius&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=In_Praise_of_Idleness&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Unpopular_Essays&action=edit&redlink=1
I have my own copy of Unpopular Essays, so I guess I could start typing it on to Wikisource, or I could get help from friends who can copy-type quickly.. In it there are chapters called Philosophy and Politics, The Future of Mankind, The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, The Functions of a Teacher, Ideas that have Helped Mankind, and Ideas that have Harmed Mankind.
This is the one chapter from it that's currently available:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Philosophy_for_Laymen
Everybody should have access to the genius of Bertrand Russell, philosopher and pacifist.
These days he'd have a site called Unpopular Blogs.
---------------------------------------------
Google Books has been in the news a lot recently,
http://books.google.com/
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6822739.ece
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS177319+04-Sep-2009+PRN20090904
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8233324.stm
This court case is being discussed on the Today programme as I'm about to post this blog. (9.48am)
The guy from Google is pointing out that the bulk of the books Google is aiming to put on line are out of print. He says publishers allow books to go out of print much more quickly these days. He thinks everyone should have instant access to everything ever written.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The film of Flight 93 was shown twice on More Four last night, and the main page of Wikisource currently features:
Should I be pedantic and change 'airlines' to 'aeroplanes' or 'airplanes'?
It's incredible to think that this transcript begins at 9.31am and ends a mere half an hour later at 10.03am, with the words “Allah is greatest”.
Licence to kill, indeed.
It's incredible that so many people in this world believe they know 'God's will' and in the name of their God commit terrible murders and atrocities.
Other people just kill in their own names, because they're badly fucked up. Thursday's Guardian carried a report on two young men, or boys, who planned to slaughter people in their home town, Denton, and in their school - imitating the Columbine atrocities on the 10th anniversary of the killings, for insane reasons of their very own.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/02/manchester-teenagers-columbine-style-attack
These sorts of fruitbats are with us and all around us all the time. Recently, driving through Islington on my way down to Devon I was sitting at traffic lights, with a blinged-up Golf GTI Drugdealer Turbo waiting alongside me, slightly ahead of my car. The meanest, nastiest, dumbest-looking motherfucker I've ever seen lurched from the curb and opened the rear door of the Golf, right in front of my front wing, just as the lights turned to green. He paused, and before getting into the car this kid, or young man, stared straight into my windscreen and yelled, “Yeah? What you fucking looking at? Want some?” He'd very gladly have given some too, if I hadn't slid my eyes straight ahead. Psycho drug addled vicious fruitbat.
Down in Devon, having taken my mum into the hospital, I went to park the car and on the way back to the hospital stopped to look in the window of a shop full of strange junk and curios. A guy pushed past me, and I heard him spit. He walked a few paces up the street and then threw beer from his open can in my direction. Oddly, he then said, “Sorry mate!”, which I took to be provocative sarcasm. Just then two people came out of the shop and started pointing at him as he went away, saying something about a house full of drug addicts, as they rang 999 on a mobile. They said they'd just turfed him out of the shop, and said he was probably flicking his beer at the shopfront instead of deliberately at me. It seems I was just a casualty caught in the crossfire, as it were – collateral damage, as they say in Afghanistan. They showed me a pane of laminated glass in the shopfront that had been battered and cracked the previous day.
The questions that are usually asked in the media are, what should we do with these people, and how should we punish them? Instead of, how did they get to be this way, and did we do anything meaningful to help them and change them as they were becoming so badly messed up in childhood and teenage? The answer, in most cases, is that we did nothing, apart from process them, preach to them, punish them, and push them overboard if deemed necessary, into turbulent waters or stinking cesspools where they could sink or swim. A few of the more obvious cases are allowed to go to weekly counseling sessions with trained mental health practitioners, if they're lucky.
Someone was on the radio yesterday arguing in favour of boot camps, which may well be better than nothing at all – better than just ignoring these pathetic and vile individuals, or just locking them up. But again, there's hardly anything ever said about meeting their special needs properly from the very earliest age. Our normal response tends to be to say to them that they can either fit in or fuck off.
That's not to say there there aren't wonderful teachers, managers and support staff in places like pupil referral units doing some wonderful work – I've seen them myself and I really take my hat off to them for being able to do what they do and cope so well with the provocation and abuse they have to deal with.
But when all's said and done, these kids just get fed back into a school system whose main or only goal is to process them through to what's called academic success. In the case of these kids such success hardly ever happens, and they're well aware they're considered failures and useless. Hence the anger, disillusionment and hatred.
Also in yesterday's news was a report of a guy who'd been fed back into the world after being locked up in Broadmoor for murder, who then promptly bought himself a claw hammer, a screwdriver and a Stanley knife, battered the life out of “a friend” and proceeded to eat his brains for breakfast.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/03/cannibal-killer-mental-care-failure
And just for good measure, also from yesterday,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/03/doncaster-torture-case-brothers
-------------------------------------------------------
Layer 39, by the way, is called The Consolations of Philosophy.
Layer 38, I notice, concludes with the following, which I'm re-posting as a follow-through from this week's thoughts on the value of meditation:
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/05/layer-38-license-to-kill.html
.
It's very possibly a landmark moment in your life when, as a user and supporter of Wikipedia, you do your first edit on the site. This was Oxzen's yesterday:
“And think not that you can direct the course of love,
If it finds you worthy, directs your course”
(Kahlil Gibran – The Prophet)
Changed to:
“And think not that you can direct the course of love,
For love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course”
http://wikilivres.info/wiki/The_Prophet/Love
Interestingly this stanza was quoted by Oxzen in Layer 38 – Licence To Kill.
Also in Layer 38 there was a mention of the film “Waltz With Bashir”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waltz_with_Bashir
On a site called Wikirank it's possible to see that: The Wikipedia page for Waltz with Bashir was viewed 25,487 times in the last 30 days. http://wikirank.com/en/Waltz_with_Bashir
That's pretty amazing, I reckon. Unbelievable in fact.
Yesterday I followed through with my rediscovery of The Prophet on Wikilivres and took a look at the phenomenon that is Wikilivres:
“This site has more than 3,000 books and documents, and 1,000 images in 8,817 pages from more than 550 authors.
This site does not belong to the Wikimedia Foundation.”
The first thing I saw on that site was the Autobiography of Gandhi. Two hours previously I'd been putting some books away, noticed my copy of that particular book, and thought to myself I really must get round to finishing reading it.
http://www.wikilivres.info/wiki/An_Autobiography_or_The_Story_of_my_Experiments_with_Truth
----------------------------------------
From there I stumbled across Wikisource:
Wikisource is an online library of free content publications, collected and maintained by our community. We now have 131,271 texts in the English language library.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
I had a very quick browse on the site and found a page for Keir Hardie's "Can a Man be a Christian on a Pound a Week?" which has nothing at all on it.There are, however, lots of brilliant things there by Bertrand Russell, for example, whose superb autobiography I read many years ago.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Bertrand_Russell
I'm now going to get round to reading the following:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Political_Ideals
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Problems_of_Philosophy
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Mind
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_China
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Education_%28Russell%29
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Russell-Einstein_Manifesto
Sadly the following aren't yet available:
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Proposed_Roads_to_Freedom:_Socialism,_Anarchism,_and_Syndicalism&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=On_the_Value_of_Scepticism&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Why_I_Am_Not_a_Christian&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=How_to_Become_a_Man_of_Genius&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=In_Praise_of_Idleness&action=edit&redlink=1
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Unpopular_Essays&action=edit&redlink=1
I have my own copy of Unpopular Essays, so I guess I could start typing it on to Wikisource, or I could get help from friends who can copy-type quickly.. In it there are chapters called Philosophy and Politics, The Future of Mankind, The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, The Functions of a Teacher, Ideas that have Helped Mankind, and Ideas that have Harmed Mankind.
This is the one chapter from it that's currently available:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Philosophy_for_Laymen
Everybody should have access to the genius of Bertrand Russell, philosopher and pacifist.
These days he'd have a site called Unpopular Blogs.
---------------------------------------------
Google Books has been in the news a lot recently,
http://books.google.com/
“Google yesterday launched a staunch defence of its plans to become the world’s librarian and bookseller. The internet giant is in the middle of a project to scan and index the world’s literary heritage. It has already digitised more than 10 million volumes in more than 100 languages and has agreements with libraries around the world to scan millions more.
Google says that the project will make a treasure trove of forgotten and out-of-print books available to anyone with an internet connection. Critics say that mankind’s “last library” should not be in the hands of a commercial enterprise.”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6822739.ece
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS177319+04-Sep-2009+PRN20090904
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8233324.stm
This court case is being discussed on the Today programme as I'm about to post this blog. (9.48am)
The guy from Google is pointing out that the bulk of the books Google is aiming to put on line are out of print. He says publishers allow books to go out of print much more quickly these days. He thinks everyone should have instant access to everything ever written.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The film of Flight 93 was shown twice on More Four last night, and the main page of Wikisource currently features:
"The Flight 93 Cockpit Transcript records the final conversations aboard United Airlines Flight #93, one of four airlines hijacked on 11 September 2001"
Should I be pedantic and change 'airlines' to 'aeroplanes' or 'airplanes'?
It's incredible to think that this transcript begins at 9.31am and ends a mere half an hour later at 10.03am, with the words “Allah is greatest”.
Licence to kill, indeed.
It's incredible that so many people in this world believe they know 'God's will' and in the name of their God commit terrible murders and atrocities.
Other people just kill in their own names, because they're badly fucked up. Thursday's Guardian carried a report on two young men, or boys, who planned to slaughter people in their home town, Denton, and in their school - imitating the Columbine atrocities on the 10th anniversary of the killings, for insane reasons of their very own.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/02/manchester-teenagers-columbine-style-attack
"Two disaffected teenagers who had a fascination with violence plotted to bomb their school in Manchester and shoot as many pupils as they could to mark the 10th anniversary of the Columbine high school massacre, a court was told today.“Two kids enraged by the corruption of this world. Depression, sadness, rage, hate, deceit.”
Matthew Swift, 18, and Ross McKnight, 16, planned to blow up a busy shopping centre in the city and then attack Audenshaw high school, shooting students and staff before killing themselves, Manchester crown court heard.
They were arrested by police in March, a month before they allegedly planned to carry out the attack, which they had nicknamed Project Rainbow.
Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said they had agreed to copy the Columbine school killings of 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 21 others before shooting themselves.
In a diary entry, Swift wrote: "Audenshaw high will be no more. Unlike Columbine, my propane bomb will actually fucking explode and I will walk from classroom to classroom killing the fuck out of everybody, then maybe people will learn."
Swift had downloaded a photograph of Harris and Klebold taken from CCTV footage of Columbine. Underneath, he wrote: "This is my favourite picture in the whole world. To most it is just a CCTV shot of the shooters. I perceive so much more; I see depression, sadness, rage, hate, deceit. Most of all I see two kids enraged by the corruption of this world. The image is beautiful." He also wrote: "Eric and Dylan will rise again."
In an MSN message to McKnight read to court, Swift claimed Harris's spirit was reincarnated in him. He wrote of feeling supreme, and superior. "I will expose the truth, I will die for what I believe, I will fight the war. Project Rainbow will not accept defeat. I will make history."
These sorts of fruitbats are with us and all around us all the time. Recently, driving through Islington on my way down to Devon I was sitting at traffic lights, with a blinged-up Golf GTI Drugdealer Turbo waiting alongside me, slightly ahead of my car. The meanest, nastiest, dumbest-looking motherfucker I've ever seen lurched from the curb and opened the rear door of the Golf, right in front of my front wing, just as the lights turned to green. He paused, and before getting into the car this kid, or young man, stared straight into my windscreen and yelled, “Yeah? What you fucking looking at? Want some?” He'd very gladly have given some too, if I hadn't slid my eyes straight ahead. Psycho drug addled vicious fruitbat.
Down in Devon, having taken my mum into the hospital, I went to park the car and on the way back to the hospital stopped to look in the window of a shop full of strange junk and curios. A guy pushed past me, and I heard him spit. He walked a few paces up the street and then threw beer from his open can in my direction. Oddly, he then said, “Sorry mate!”, which I took to be provocative sarcasm. Just then two people came out of the shop and started pointing at him as he went away, saying something about a house full of drug addicts, as they rang 999 on a mobile. They said they'd just turfed him out of the shop, and said he was probably flicking his beer at the shopfront instead of deliberately at me. It seems I was just a casualty caught in the crossfire, as it were – collateral damage, as they say in Afghanistan. They showed me a pane of laminated glass in the shopfront that had been battered and cracked the previous day.
The questions that are usually asked in the media are, what should we do with these people, and how should we punish them? Instead of, how did they get to be this way, and did we do anything meaningful to help them and change them as they were becoming so badly messed up in childhood and teenage? The answer, in most cases, is that we did nothing, apart from process them, preach to them, punish them, and push them overboard if deemed necessary, into turbulent waters or stinking cesspools where they could sink or swim. A few of the more obvious cases are allowed to go to weekly counseling sessions with trained mental health practitioners, if they're lucky.
Someone was on the radio yesterday arguing in favour of boot camps, which may well be better than nothing at all – better than just ignoring these pathetic and vile individuals, or just locking them up. But again, there's hardly anything ever said about meeting their special needs properly from the very earliest age. Our normal response tends to be to say to them that they can either fit in or fuck off.
That's not to say there there aren't wonderful teachers, managers and support staff in places like pupil referral units doing some wonderful work – I've seen them myself and I really take my hat off to them for being able to do what they do and cope so well with the provocation and abuse they have to deal with.
But when all's said and done, these kids just get fed back into a school system whose main or only goal is to process them through to what's called academic success. In the case of these kids such success hardly ever happens, and they're well aware they're considered failures and useless. Hence the anger, disillusionment and hatred.
Also in yesterday's news was a report of a guy who'd been fed back into the world after being locked up in Broadmoor for murder, who then promptly bought himself a claw hammer, a screwdriver and a Stanley knife, battered the life out of “a friend” and proceeded to eat his brains for breakfast.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/03/cannibal-killer-mental-care-failure
And just for good measure, also from yesterday,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/sep/03/doncaster-torture-case-brothers
Doncaster torture case: Brothers, 12 and 10, used sticks and noose on boys
Two brothers aged 12 and 10 have admitted carrying out a sustained attack on two boys in parkland in South Yorkshire during which their victims were tortured, beaten, robbed and sexually assaulted.
One of the victims, an 11-year-old boy, almost died when part of a bathroom sink was smashed against his head. He was only saved when local people went out searching after the other boy, aged nine, was found wandering a street in Edlington, on the edge of Doncaster, severely traumatised and covered in blood.
During the assault on Saturday 4 April – details of which can only be revealed now – the brothers also used a noose, lighted cigarettes, bricks and sharp ends of sticks to torment their victims.
At one point, the older victim, who was found with ligature marks around his neck, begged the brothers: "Leave me, I can't see. Leave me to die."
Today the brothers pleaded guilty at Sheffield crown court to committing grievous bodily harm, robbery, and forcing the victims to perform sexual acts on each other. Prosecutors agreed not to pursue a more serious charge of attempted murder, which the brothers denied, to avoid the necessity of a full trial in which the victims would have had to give evidence. Sentencing will take place in November.
The attack has echoes of the murder of two-year-old James Bulger in 1993 by two boys aged 10 at the time.
Today it emerged that the brothers were both known to police and social services after earlier violent incidents. On the morning of the attack they had been due to answer questions at a local police station about a separate incident a week before in which another 11-year-old boy was assaulted.
The attackers, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had only been in Edlington, a former pit village, for about three weeks, living with foster parents aged in their 60s.
-------------------------------------------------------
Layer 39, by the way, is called The Consolations of Philosophy.
Layer 38, I notice, concludes with the following, which I'm re-posting as a follow-through from this week's thoughts on the value of meditation:
It’s always good to re-read “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran from time to time.
http://leb.net/gibran/works/prophet/prophet.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5484/Gibran.htm
Collins defines [the verb] “divine” as:
“To perceive or understand (something) by intuition or insight” (spiritual intelligence) and
“To discern (a hidden or future reality) as though by supernatural power”.
The whole notion of hidden realities I find very interesting. This is fertile territory for reflection and meditation. As is the whole realm of the spiritual, the metaphysical, the supernatural, if you like. This is indeed the realm of intuition and insight. Looking within, not without.
We must train ourselves to let insight pierce and illuminate the dark areas, where logic, reason and the senses cannot penetrate, since our knowledge is always so limited and so open to interpretation, since our senses often fail to make sense of what’s around us, since reason is often based on false premises.
We need these things on the school curriculum.
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/05/layer-38-license-to-kill.html
.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Layer 160 None of Our Business, The Main Purpose of Religion, Contrition, Mass Exile, Greedy Pig Fever and Dr. Strangelove.
.
At times like this I'm glad we have a left/liberal paper like the Guardian/Observer. Consider these crucial pieces.
1. Despite menacing noises from Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's leading centre-left daily has refused to stop demanding answers to 10 questions put to him over his relationship with a Neapolitan teenager, Noemi Letizia.
Nor has there been any explanation of the latest revelation that the 18-year-old Ms Letizia is the owner of four houses. This is about more than media prurience. His wife has said she can no longer stay with a man who "frequents minors" and that he is "not well".
The press remains one of the few forces of critical appraisal in a society where almost all the television channels are answerable to Mr Berlusconi.
When a reporter from La Repubblica tackled him this week, Mr Berlusconi lost his rag. "What right have you to ask?" he stormed. The answer in a democratic society must be: "All the right in the world." La Repubblica is ploughing a lonely furrow and deserves support.
Guardian Editorial
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/23/silvio-berlusconi-la-repubblica-letizia
Doesn't this piece remind us of Totnes MP Anthony Steen? The South Devon Herald Express said,
“In his interview, broadcast at lunchtime yesterday, Mr Steen insisted his behaviour was 'impeccable' and he had merely been 'caught on the wrong foot'.
"I've done nothing criminal, that's the most awful thing, and do you know what it's about? Jealousy," he told World at One.
"I've got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral. It's a merchant's house of the 19th century. It's not particularly attractive, it just does me nicely."
“What right does the public have to interfere with my private life? None."
Of course he eventually came to his senses and apologised, but not before his party leader, Mr Cameron, told BBC Radio 4 it was "an appalling thing to say".
"I gave him a very clear instruction after that interview - one more squeak like that and he will have the whip taken away from him so fast his feet won't touch the ground," Mr Cameron told BBC Radio 4's the World at One.
"It was a completely unacceptable interview. It was a completely unacceptable thing to say. He's announced his retirement from Parliament."
The problem with Berlusconi, of course, is that he's the leader of his party and the leader of his country.
----------------------------------------------
2. A wonderful piece in “Face To Faith” in yesterday's paper, by Nitin Mehta, founder of the Indian Cultural Centre:
Faiths that originated in India have a long history of toleration and openness to new ideas, says Nitin Mehta
Religions that have their roots in India – namely, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism – believe all paths to God are valid, and over the centuries this sublime belief has helped avoid violence and strife. There are thousands of sects within Hinduism, and violence between them is unknown.
There is a great parable in Buddhism that describes a blind man touching different parts of an elephant and describing what he thinks it looks like. In his own way he is correct in his description, and the same is true of religions.
According to the time, circumstances and the culture it is born in, a religion will interpret the truth as it sees it. Indic religions believe there is nothing to fight about in these apparent differences. Indeed the whole concept of "my religion" is an extension of my race, my country, all of which the Indic religions call maya or illusion – at death all these attachments are severed.
When the Zoroastrians known as the Parsees came to India having been driven out of Persia for their religious beliefs, the Hindu king welcomed them and not only tolerated but encouraged them to continue practising their faith. Parsees have lived happily in India over the centuries, and there has not been a single incident of confrontation with the majority Hindus. Indeed the Parsees have paid back by excelling in so many fields that have put India on the map as a economic giant. Sikhs have defended other faiths facing persecution.
This unshakable belief in diversity has meant that religions of India have never sought to convert others. The root of cause of violence in the name of religion is the desire to convert – indeed entire civilisations have perished whenever a new ideology believing in the supremacy of its truth has decided to impose its version of truth on others.
The other unique advantage the Indic religions have is that precisely because of their tolerance of ideas they are able to reform whenever negative practices creep in, as they do in any long-established religion. Mahatma Gandhi and many others in India were able to confront long-established but outdated and corrupt practices which had taken root in Hinduism. Much earlier Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavira had also challenged practices such as animal sacrifices that had crept into some Hindu sects. In many faiths such reformers have faced violent persecution, but Hinduism welcomes valid criticism.
This permanent revolution, to use a Trotskyite term, keeps the faith in touch with the ever-changing world. And this freedom of thought and expression is the reason why democracy is thriving in India. Until the recent Indian elections, the communists had been in power in West Bengal for a long time; in true Indian tradition, they had become integral to the all-encompassing mosaic of Indian life. The significance of this can only be realised when one considers the likelihood of communists running the show in one of the states of America!
New thoughts and new ideas do not frighten the people of Indic religions; neither do they stifle them. As Mahatma Gandhi said: "Let my windows be open to receive new ideas but let me also be strong enough not to be blown away by them." In the heart of New Delhi there is a beautiful Baha'i temple. This new temple sits comfortably in its new home and Indians visit it in large numbers hoping that there will be something new to learn from it which will enrich their lives. Until and unless all faiths around the world acknowledge the unique diversity and the rainbow of different cultures and faiths that God has given us and which so enrich our lives, religions will create strife instead of the peace that is the main purpose of religion.
Brilliant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/23/face-to-faith-nitin-mehta
---------------------------------------------------
3. “We want real contrition for our abuse.” Some excellent letters in the paper yesterday:
“It is entirely of a piece with the fact that the English Catholic hierarchy have made no statement about, nor set up an independent inquiry into, the possibility of child sex abuse in Catholic institutions in England, despite the fact that it is inconceivable that the church in England should have completely escaped the practices that have been shown to be endemic in the churches in the US and Ireland. I do not believe the church has any concern for the victims of the child sex abuse that has taken place and instead is primarily concerned to limit the damage to itself.”
And so on.
Also:
“Abuse of children was the norm in Catholic educational institutions in Ireland throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, not the exception. Catholic parents were told suffering would help their children into heaven. I remember the small bumps on the back of my head where nuns would hit me, always leading with the ring finger, I was locked in a cupboard so I would know what the dark hole was like before entering the fires of hell.”
From Richard Lanigan
And:
“As a solicitor representing victims of child abuse, particularly in the Catholic church, I am completely unsurprised by the comments from Vincent Nichols, the new Archbishop of Westminster. As Archbishop of Birmingham he fought legal claims by child abuse victims tooth and nail, delaying justice for many years. Moreover, even when legal claims have succeeded in the courts he has been unwilling to apologise for the archdiocese's failings. His mask may have slipped publicly for the first time, but for Nichols this contempt for victims and unwillingness to learn lessons is par for the course.”
From Richard Scorer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/23/letters-catholic-abuse
----------------------------------------------------
3. "A reshuffle of these grubby MPs is futile. Try mass exile” - Polly Toynbee
Britain has always held its politicians in low esteem . . .
So will this prove to be the tipping point in which "throw the bastards out" candidates overwhelm the old parties? Pollsters think almost certainly not. Labour may well be thrown out, but probably only a handful of independents will squeeze through the first past the post two-party barrier to uppity citizens.
As that hard reality dawns on people, here is the best opportunity to take electoral reform from the realms of anorak academics into popular politics. If Labour had an ounce of sense left, it would see that radical reform is its last chance to regain a shred of credibility – and the best reason not to hold an election until a constitutional convention draws up propositions for a referendum to be held at the same time.
Only a savage act of House cleaning, with famous faces removed, might persuade voters that Labour is worth listening to again.
It will be for backbenchers and junior ministers to make that happen. I have not a shred of evidence, no wink or nod that she would, but Harriet Harman – again this week declaring herself a non-runner – has a unique authority to galvanise her party to save itself after 5 June. Despite being the one elected minister not dependent on prime ministerial patronage, she may have neither the inclination nor the nerve.
The party may recoil from this cleansing ruthlessness, but after a crushing defeat they will have to do it anyway. So why not now, before disaster strikes?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/mps-expenses-harrietharman
-----------------------------------------------
Two 'cultural commentators' – Mark Lawson and Hadley Freeman – wrote interesting pieces.
4. Westminster greedy pig fever is tearing up the media rulebook. - Mark Lawson
A solemn principle of higher journalism is that writing a cheque before writing a story devalues the information gained; defence counsel in libel cases often discredit witnesses by pointing out that they sold their evidence. And so parliamentarians and disgruntled journalistic rivals tried to direct attention to the money allegedly going out of the Telegraph rather than the cash spilling into constituencies.
Such bleats, however, are now silent because, even if it were to turn out that the paper got the documents by mugging a blind octogenarian nun, the import of the information would justify almost any way it came to light.
The haughtier newspapers and broadcasters have long decried the pack-attack atmosphere of elimination TV shows such as Big Brother, while many articles have argued that the Blair government was more or less responsible for the death of Dr David Kelly by exposing him to cruel scrutiny. Yet this last fortnight has produced hundreds of Dr Kellys – anonymous figures suddenly squirming in the searchlights – and the mood of the Question Time audience resembled humiliation shows in the savage desperation to vote the House of Commons mates off their show.
Clearly, parliamentarians who see public office as an opportunity to better the accommodation of their ducks have done more to deserve hostility than either late weapons experts or witless twentysomethings in a TV house.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/expenses-chequebook-journalism
5. Mr Cheney, please, tell us about it. - Hadley Freeman
Babbling away like a Speaker's Corner regular, Bush's former guru is doing him a final favour.
I don't want to start any libellous rumours here, but it's hard not to wonder if someone (Rush Limbaugh? Rahm Emanuel? It could work either way) has been putting cocaine in Cheney's morning coffee. The man just will not shut the hell up. Cheney was once the Republican party's mysterious Thomas Pynchon, but in the past two weeks he has become a media slut of Ulrika Jonsson-type proportions, with an accompanying sense of cringing embarrassment, and I would not be surprised if he turned up in the Big Brother house this summer, railing about the benefits of Abu Ghraib to fellow housemates Vanessa Feltz and Marcus Brigstocke.
On Thursday the all new Chatty Cheney gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute on his favourite subject – Torture: it's Super! – while, as chance would have it, Obama happened to be giving a talk at almost exactly the same time on the proposed closure of Guantánamo Bay.
There is no question that there is something about Cheney that still fascinates people. Last week, a Newsweek reporter claimed that Joe Biden – another talkative VP, coincidentally – revealed at a dinner that he had been shown an underground "bunker-like room" at the National Observatory in Washington, where Cheney lived during his time as vice-president. With its "steel door secured by an elaborate lock" and a "narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment" (neighbours had apparently complained of loud construction work – for some reason that's my favourite detail), it fits in so perfectly with the popular perception of Cheney that not even the Biden office's hastily issued semi-denial (apparently, it was just an "upstairs workplace") could quell the idea that for eight years America was ruled by Dr Strangelove.
But Chatty Cheney may kill that idea himself. The reason for the chat, of course, is that Cheney feels he has a legacy to defend, which says much about who he feels was actually running the country during the past two terms. Yet in defending what little there was left to defend, he has ended up decimating it. The wizard has stepped out from behind the curtain and he has shown himself to be, far from the horrifically fascinating mastermind he occasionally seemed during his time as VP, rather a ranting old man who wouldn't look amiss at Speakers' Corner and who thinks the best way to govern is to incite fear and paranoia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/cheney-bush
.
At times like this I'm glad we have a left/liberal paper like the Guardian/Observer. Consider these crucial pieces.
1. Despite menacing noises from Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's leading centre-left daily has refused to stop demanding answers to 10 questions put to him over his relationship with a Neapolitan teenager, Noemi Letizia.
Nor has there been any explanation of the latest revelation that the 18-year-old Ms Letizia is the owner of four houses. This is about more than media prurience. His wife has said she can no longer stay with a man who "frequents minors" and that he is "not well".
The press remains one of the few forces of critical appraisal in a society where almost all the television channels are answerable to Mr Berlusconi.
When a reporter from La Repubblica tackled him this week, Mr Berlusconi lost his rag. "What right have you to ask?" he stormed. The answer in a democratic society must be: "All the right in the world." La Repubblica is ploughing a lonely furrow and deserves support.
Guardian Editorial
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/23/silvio-berlusconi-la-repubblica-letizia
Doesn't this piece remind us of Totnes MP Anthony Steen? The South Devon Herald Express said,
“In his interview, broadcast at lunchtime yesterday, Mr Steen insisted his behaviour was 'impeccable' and he had merely been 'caught on the wrong foot'.
"I've done nothing criminal, that's the most awful thing, and do you know what it's about? Jealousy," he told World at One.
"I've got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral. It's a merchant's house of the 19th century. It's not particularly attractive, it just does me nicely."
“What right does the public have to interfere with my private life? None."
Of course he eventually came to his senses and apologised, but not before his party leader, Mr Cameron, told BBC Radio 4 it was "an appalling thing to say".
"I gave him a very clear instruction after that interview - one more squeak like that and he will have the whip taken away from him so fast his feet won't touch the ground," Mr Cameron told BBC Radio 4's the World at One.
"It was a completely unacceptable interview. It was a completely unacceptable thing to say. He's announced his retirement from Parliament."
The problem with Berlusconi, of course, is that he's the leader of his party and the leader of his country.
----------------------------------------------
2. A wonderful piece in “Face To Faith” in yesterday's paper, by Nitin Mehta, founder of the Indian Cultural Centre:
Faiths that originated in India have a long history of toleration and openness to new ideas, says Nitin Mehta
Religions that have their roots in India – namely, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism – believe all paths to God are valid, and over the centuries this sublime belief has helped avoid violence and strife. There are thousands of sects within Hinduism, and violence between them is unknown.
There is a great parable in Buddhism that describes a blind man touching different parts of an elephant and describing what he thinks it looks like. In his own way he is correct in his description, and the same is true of religions.
According to the time, circumstances and the culture it is born in, a religion will interpret the truth as it sees it. Indic religions believe there is nothing to fight about in these apparent differences. Indeed the whole concept of "my religion" is an extension of my race, my country, all of which the Indic religions call maya or illusion – at death all these attachments are severed.
When the Zoroastrians known as the Parsees came to India having been driven out of Persia for their religious beliefs, the Hindu king welcomed them and not only tolerated but encouraged them to continue practising their faith. Parsees have lived happily in India over the centuries, and there has not been a single incident of confrontation with the majority Hindus. Indeed the Parsees have paid back by excelling in so many fields that have put India on the map as a economic giant. Sikhs have defended other faiths facing persecution.
This unshakable belief in diversity has meant that religions of India have never sought to convert others. The root of cause of violence in the name of religion is the desire to convert – indeed entire civilisations have perished whenever a new ideology believing in the supremacy of its truth has decided to impose its version of truth on others.
The other unique advantage the Indic religions have is that precisely because of their tolerance of ideas they are able to reform whenever negative practices creep in, as they do in any long-established religion. Mahatma Gandhi and many others in India were able to confront long-established but outdated and corrupt practices which had taken root in Hinduism. Much earlier Lord Buddha and Lord Mahavira had also challenged practices such as animal sacrifices that had crept into some Hindu sects. In many faiths such reformers have faced violent persecution, but Hinduism welcomes valid criticism.
This permanent revolution, to use a Trotskyite term, keeps the faith in touch with the ever-changing world. And this freedom of thought and expression is the reason why democracy is thriving in India. Until the recent Indian elections, the communists had been in power in West Bengal for a long time; in true Indian tradition, they had become integral to the all-encompassing mosaic of Indian life. The significance of this can only be realised when one considers the likelihood of communists running the show in one of the states of America!
New thoughts and new ideas do not frighten the people of Indic religions; neither do they stifle them. As Mahatma Gandhi said: "Let my windows be open to receive new ideas but let me also be strong enough not to be blown away by them." In the heart of New Delhi there is a beautiful Baha'i temple. This new temple sits comfortably in its new home and Indians visit it in large numbers hoping that there will be something new to learn from it which will enrich their lives. Until and unless all faiths around the world acknowledge the unique diversity and the rainbow of different cultures and faiths that God has given us and which so enrich our lives, religions will create strife instead of the peace that is the main purpose of religion.
Brilliant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/23/face-to-faith-nitin-mehta
---------------------------------------------------
3. “We want real contrition for our abuse.” Some excellent letters in the paper yesterday:
“It is entirely of a piece with the fact that the English Catholic hierarchy have made no statement about, nor set up an independent inquiry into, the possibility of child sex abuse in Catholic institutions in England, despite the fact that it is inconceivable that the church in England should have completely escaped the practices that have been shown to be endemic in the churches in the US and Ireland. I do not believe the church has any concern for the victims of the child sex abuse that has taken place and instead is primarily concerned to limit the damage to itself.”
And so on.
Also:
“Abuse of children was the norm in Catholic educational institutions in Ireland throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, not the exception. Catholic parents were told suffering would help their children into heaven. I remember the small bumps on the back of my head where nuns would hit me, always leading with the ring finger, I was locked in a cupboard so I would know what the dark hole was like before entering the fires of hell.”
From Richard Lanigan
And:
“As a solicitor representing victims of child abuse, particularly in the Catholic church, I am completely unsurprised by the comments from Vincent Nichols, the new Archbishop of Westminster. As Archbishop of Birmingham he fought legal claims by child abuse victims tooth and nail, delaying justice for many years. Moreover, even when legal claims have succeeded in the courts he has been unwilling to apologise for the archdiocese's failings. His mask may have slipped publicly for the first time, but for Nichols this contempt for victims and unwillingness to learn lessons is par for the course.”
From Richard Scorer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/23/letters-catholic-abuse
----------------------------------------------------
3. "A reshuffle of these grubby MPs is futile. Try mass exile” - Polly Toynbee
Britain has always held its politicians in low esteem . . .
So will this prove to be the tipping point in which "throw the bastards out" candidates overwhelm the old parties? Pollsters think almost certainly not. Labour may well be thrown out, but probably only a handful of independents will squeeze through the first past the post two-party barrier to uppity citizens.
As that hard reality dawns on people, here is the best opportunity to take electoral reform from the realms of anorak academics into popular politics. If Labour had an ounce of sense left, it would see that radical reform is its last chance to regain a shred of credibility – and the best reason not to hold an election until a constitutional convention draws up propositions for a referendum to be held at the same time.
Only a savage act of House cleaning, with famous faces removed, might persuade voters that Labour is worth listening to again.
It will be for backbenchers and junior ministers to make that happen. I have not a shred of evidence, no wink or nod that she would, but Harriet Harman – again this week declaring herself a non-runner – has a unique authority to galvanise her party to save itself after 5 June. Despite being the one elected minister not dependent on prime ministerial patronage, she may have neither the inclination nor the nerve.
The party may recoil from this cleansing ruthlessness, but after a crushing defeat they will have to do it anyway. So why not now, before disaster strikes?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/mps-expenses-harrietharman
-----------------------------------------------
Two 'cultural commentators' – Mark Lawson and Hadley Freeman – wrote interesting pieces.
4. Westminster greedy pig fever is tearing up the media rulebook. - Mark Lawson
A solemn principle of higher journalism is that writing a cheque before writing a story devalues the information gained; defence counsel in libel cases often discredit witnesses by pointing out that they sold their evidence. And so parliamentarians and disgruntled journalistic rivals tried to direct attention to the money allegedly going out of the Telegraph rather than the cash spilling into constituencies.
Such bleats, however, are now silent because, even if it were to turn out that the paper got the documents by mugging a blind octogenarian nun, the import of the information would justify almost any way it came to light.
The haughtier newspapers and broadcasters have long decried the pack-attack atmosphere of elimination TV shows such as Big Brother, while many articles have argued that the Blair government was more or less responsible for the death of Dr David Kelly by exposing him to cruel scrutiny. Yet this last fortnight has produced hundreds of Dr Kellys – anonymous figures suddenly squirming in the searchlights – and the mood of the Question Time audience resembled humiliation shows in the savage desperation to vote the House of Commons mates off their show.
Clearly, parliamentarians who see public office as an opportunity to better the accommodation of their ducks have done more to deserve hostility than either late weapons experts or witless twentysomethings in a TV house.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/expenses-chequebook-journalism
5. Mr Cheney, please, tell us about it. - Hadley Freeman
Babbling away like a Speaker's Corner regular, Bush's former guru is doing him a final favour.
I don't want to start any libellous rumours here, but it's hard not to wonder if someone (Rush Limbaugh? Rahm Emanuel? It could work either way) has been putting cocaine in Cheney's morning coffee. The man just will not shut the hell up. Cheney was once the Republican party's mysterious Thomas Pynchon, but in the past two weeks he has become a media slut of Ulrika Jonsson-type proportions, with an accompanying sense of cringing embarrassment, and I would not be surprised if he turned up in the Big Brother house this summer, railing about the benefits of Abu Ghraib to fellow housemates Vanessa Feltz and Marcus Brigstocke.
On Thursday the all new Chatty Cheney gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute on his favourite subject – Torture: it's Super! – while, as chance would have it, Obama happened to be giving a talk at almost exactly the same time on the proposed closure of Guantánamo Bay.
There is no question that there is something about Cheney that still fascinates people. Last week, a Newsweek reporter claimed that Joe Biden – another talkative VP, coincidentally – revealed at a dinner that he had been shown an underground "bunker-like room" at the National Observatory in Washington, where Cheney lived during his time as vice-president. With its "steel door secured by an elaborate lock" and a "narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment" (neighbours had apparently complained of loud construction work – for some reason that's my favourite detail), it fits in so perfectly with the popular perception of Cheney that not even the Biden office's hastily issued semi-denial (apparently, it was just an "upstairs workplace") could quell the idea that for eight years America was ruled by Dr Strangelove.
But Chatty Cheney may kill that idea himself. The reason for the chat, of course, is that Cheney feels he has a legacy to defend, which says much about who he feels was actually running the country during the past two terms. Yet in defending what little there was left to defend, he has ended up decimating it. The wizard has stepped out from behind the curtain and he has shown himself to be, far from the horrifically fascinating mastermind he occasionally seemed during his time as VP, rather a ranting old man who wouldn't look amiss at Speakers' Corner and who thinks the best way to govern is to incite fear and paranoia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/22/cheney-bush
.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Layer 141 Springwatch, Zen lessons, Seismic Shifts, the Year of the Ox, the G20 and the Art of Living.
.
This should have been posted yesterday.
Springwatch 7
Devon
Devon is glorious in the Spring. Two months ago the first camellias made an appearance, and some of them are still only now coming into full bloom, with their blazing scarlets and deep reds. I even spotted one with yellow flowers.
Thousands of trees are in blossom, with the first slight appearance of the brilliant white blossoms of flowering cherries this week. Can’t wait to see the cherry blossoms in the gardens of Japan next week.
Meanwhile, in Devon, daffodils and narcissi are everywhere in full bloom, plus the first tulips, and the hyacinths, with their incredible fragrance. There’s also the brilliant yellow of the forsythia and the yellow pom-poms on the shrub whose name I’ve never known.
There’s masses of wallflowers, primroses, and humble white daisies. The first delicate green and red leaves of Japanese maple have started to unfurl. Strange that these fragile-looking acers come into leaf before our more robust native trees, most of which still have their winter bareness. It must be the longer daylight hours that trigger their buds.
There are tiny blue flowers on the rosemary shrubs, and small purple ones on the heather. The gorse is studded with bright yellow. The periwinkle is a mass of purple and dark blue. There are some magnificent magnolias full of creamily exotic flowers, which have always struck me as almost unreal.
By next week there will be the first clematis and a lot more tulips. Still to come are the magnificent blues of the cyanothus trees and the wonderful reds and scarlets of the rhododendrons and azaleas.
Arguably the Spring is even more glorious in this country than the summer, especially if you happen to appreciate blossom on the trees more than green leaves, and if you prefer the varieties of Spring flowers to those of the summer.
This particular Spring has been more glorious than any I can remember. Parts of England have had thirteen consecutive days of bright sunshine and blue skies, as the high pressure system continued to hang around and shield us from the usual cloudy and wet westerly anti-cyclones and the northerly gales.
Zen tells us to pay attention to nature and to learn from nature. Nature, the natural world, has the power to inspire awe and wonder, and through this power to lead us along the Way towards better living, to character development and enlightenment. The mere observation of incredible beauty in both form and colour refreshes and recharges our jaded spirits.
Thanks to the weather and the wonders of Spring it seems to me there’s a change in most people out in the streets, which seem weirdly calm and quiet. And not just in Devon. Last week in Broadway Market in the East End there were masses of people out enjoying the sun, even people picnicking on the grass in London Fields. In March!
Last winter was the best in living memory as well - the coldest overall for a century, but many more bright and sunny days than normal, and the best and deepest snowfalls for decades.
I think it’s more than coincidence that my journeys along 700 miles of motorways and city streets this week, travelling between Devon, London and Hastings, have been as pleasant and hassle-free as I’ve ever known. Well done the drivers of England! Long may it continue!
Year of the Ox
So far the Year of the Ox is living up to expectations.
Last year’s Rat year began a new cycle, and was seismic in many, many ways. The sense of breaking with the past was immense. The near-collapse of capitalism, which has been shaken to its very foundations, echoed the collapse of communism in 1989/90. Huge sums of public money have been poured into repairing and propping up what's left of the old financial system.
The Year of the Rat brought about the beginning of vast numbers of people starting to question old assumptions about values, money, economics, the way they live, and their quality of life.
There was the rise of Obama and the demise of Bush and Cheney. A truly seismic event if ever there was one. The felling of those two arseholes, those twin towers of evil. The World Enslaved Centre, or the World Corrupt and Depraved Centre. The Project for the New American Century! Ha! What a project it turned out to be. The ‘Washington Consensus’ is well and truly a pile of rubble.
Clearly the Ox year is about building on last year’s beginnings, and recreating our world, re-imagining our lives, taking a fresh look at politics, economics, finance, business, social policy, equality, climate change, sustainability, education, etc. Those that don’t participate don’t deserve a say. No play, no say.
G20
Next week, dammit, Oxzen is going to be away on the other side of the planet just as huge events unfold in London - the meeting of the G20 and massive demonstrations in the City and elsewhere, when people will at last take to the streets in an organised way and make clear their demands to what is the nearest we currently have to a World Government. It’s going to be very interesting.
My advice is to book a day’s holiday, wherever possible, and either join in the various demonstrations, or stay at home and watch what happens live on News 24. Or possibly do both. Hopefully the BBC’s coverage of events will be re-run throughout the evening on News 24. There’s bound to be plenty to watch and to think about. There’s a hell of a lot of anger waiting to be expressed, and a hell of a lot of demands to be voiced. This is the Big One.
There were two very good pieces in the Guardian on Monday on pages 24 and 25 under the headline, Grave new world: hard choices leaders face to solve the crisis. It behoves everyone to read carefully and to form their own opinion.
Larry Elliot, the economics editor, “suggests five areas for leaders at next week’s G20 summit to focus on”, in which he describes the need for a new economics, reform of the IMF, tougher global regulation, etc.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/22/larry-elliott-proposals-for-g20
Aditya Chakraborty, under the heading ‘The pursuit of happiness’, says: “Forget growth: let’s focus on wellbeing”. Some interesting thoughts there on The Art of Living, which is probably worth a google as well. We’re talking here about rethinking our entire attitude to who we are and why we do what we do, as well as re-making the entire global web of economic and cultural relationships.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/22/gdp-economic-growth-happiness-wellbeing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2009/mar/23/globalrecession-financial-crisis
Katharine Ainger wrote a good opinion piece in the Guardian this week - on the G20 and 'global social movements'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/26/anticapitalism-protest-recession-g20
Dr Jonathan Sachs
His Thought for Today focused on the transformations that are due to global communication technologies. Are we equal to the challenge of thinking in global terms, realising that we share a common fate? Only by turning outward can we create a movement for change. Moving from national pride to a new age of global responsibility.
Education
More headlines this week about the Primary Curriculum Review and its implications for schools - more right-wing commentators getting hot under the collar about the possibility of teaching kids to use Facebook and Twitter, and dropping the teaching of history. Hilarious. Those bastards sense the beginnings of a fightback against all they’ve done to diminish the rights of children and to destroy the work that had gone on over two or three progressive decades to make education and learning in this country fit for the needs of children in the 21st, and not the 19th, Century.
Not that it was ever fit for purpose, even in Dickens’ lifetime, when the first national network of state-run schools was constructed. Children should NEVER have been so inhumanly treated. They should never have been made to sit passively and silently focused on a teacher who saw his/her role as doling out imperial gallons of facts, and been punished if they failed to do so.
This morning we hear that the NUT and the NAHT have got together to formulate motions which they’ll put to their respective annual conferences this Spring demanding that this year’s KS2 SATs will be the last of them. Leaving aside the fact that these two large and potentially powerful organisations should have done this a decade ago, in fact prior to the imposition of this evil idea, this is incredibly positive news. My flabber is ghasted. This is seismic. I really didn’t imagine, after all this time, that they were up to such sensible collaboration.
Having given the government notice that they’ll no longer collaborate with such anti-child, anti-teacher evil fucking nonsense, it will only remain for their members to have absolutely no further truck with either coaching kids for the tests or indeed implementing them. What’s the government going to do? Sack them all?
Gandhi said this about chasing targets and results:
"He who is ever brooding over the result, often loses nerve in the performance of duty. He becomes impatient and then gives vent to anger and begins to do unworthy things; he jumps from action to action, never remaining faithful to any. He who broods over results is like a man given to the object of senses; he is ever distracted, he says goodbye to all scruples, everything is right in his estimation and he therefore resorts to means fair and foul to attain his end".
If that sounds like New Labour and the majority of Westminster’s political establishment, and their obsessive whipping of public servants towards often unattainable targets and results, then so be it. Ed Balls’ instant repost to the unions’ statement was to the effect that headteachers had better not get involved in any test boycotts because they’ll be breaking the law. Tough talk, Mr Ed.
I wonder what’s better, and which is right - breaking an immoral politician-made law, or doing what’s right for children and teachers? Gandhi would have known. Gandhi took on the whole of the British state and its empire, without resort to arms or violence, and won. He was thrown into prison for his beliefs, and still stuck to doing what he knew was right. Is it too much to expect for headteachers to do the same? Especially if they have the vast majority of the public and parents backing them and urging them to do what is right.
Never mind a ballot of their members for a SATs boycott. The NUT and NAHT need to launch a major campaign against the vile SATs and league tables’ terror and then ballot the English public. No need to bother with Scotland and Wales - they have no truck with SATs anyhow.
http://www.youmeworks.com/clingfree.html
Public Sector Workers Unite Against Blunkett!
The Blunk lumbered into action this week with a Guardian column expressing astonishment that the bloody ungrateful public sector workers are telling pollsters that they’re not going to vote New Labour next time. His point is that under a Tory government many of them will lose their jobs through budget cuts, and the bastards should recognise how much the public sector has been expanded under Blair & Brown.
The world’s most hideous politician, (after Hazel Blears - what is it with these Northern twat politicos?), ought to take a moment to reflect on the fact that the public sector workers care more about the people they serve and being true to their own professionalism than they do about looking after their own job security. For that they deserve applause.
Cameron has said that the NuLabour targets regime is vile and must be scrapped, and professionalism and local autonomy must be restored to the public services. So why not vote for him? What’s not to vote for? Blunkett, of course, as a dinosaur trade unionist thinks only in terms of how many jobs he can create or preserve for ‘the workers’ - what he sees as operatives in miserable results factories.
He can’t understand either that many of us have very long memories and we still hate his guts (and Blair’s, and NuLabour’s) for what he did to education post-1997 - not only retaining Woodhead as his stick to beat the teaching profession, but going even further than the Tories would have done in micromanaging education through central diktat, publishing league tables, making Ofsted even more nasty and vindictive, payment and promotion by results, focusing exclusively on test and exam data, etc, etc.
We remember well his words to those who work in the most challenging schools - “No excuses for failure.” We’ll never excuse his failures, or those of NuLabour, through over 10 years of nasty neo-conservative dictatorship.
The only way we’d vote for his party next time would be if they came out and recanted, admitted that they’ve done all the wrong things, and declared their intention to reverse all their policies on running the public services, including privatisation and marketisation.
But that won’t happen. As the Blunk says in his column, “The government has to avoid blinking”. So carry on Blunking. Blinking is something the Blunk will never do. Never has, never will. His belief in his own infallibility is absolute. And he pays no attention whatever to what every sane, intelligent person had been saying for years.
His, and NuLabour’s, approach to improving public services has been entirely on the Soviet model. Invest in setting up more and more collective farms and tractor factories. Install compliant managers who agree to chase output targets. Give them precise directions as to how to achieve their targets. Punish them ruthlessly if they fail to reach their targets (No excuses for failure), and then wonder why the bloody ingrates hate them and rebel against them, plus the tractors are rubbish and crop production generally diminishes. Animal Farm indeed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/26/labour-conservatives-local-government-nhs
Whitechapel
This week sees the reopening of the newly refurbished and extended Whitechapel gallery. A full-sized tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica, which normally hangs in the United Nations building in New York, is the centrepiece of the first exhibition of the gallery. This is clearly a must-see show, and it’s brilliant that the gallery has had these improvements.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/26/pablo-picasso-guernica-spain-war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/mar/17/whitechapel-gallery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2009/mar/17/architecture-tour-whitechapel-art-gallery
.
This should have been posted yesterday.
Springwatch 7
Devon
Devon is glorious in the Spring. Two months ago the first camellias made an appearance, and some of them are still only now coming into full bloom, with their blazing scarlets and deep reds. I even spotted one with yellow flowers.
Thousands of trees are in blossom, with the first slight appearance of the brilliant white blossoms of flowering cherries this week. Can’t wait to see the cherry blossoms in the gardens of Japan next week.
Meanwhile, in Devon, daffodils and narcissi are everywhere in full bloom, plus the first tulips, and the hyacinths, with their incredible fragrance. There’s also the brilliant yellow of the forsythia and the yellow pom-poms on the shrub whose name I’ve never known.
There’s masses of wallflowers, primroses, and humble white daisies. The first delicate green and red leaves of Japanese maple have started to unfurl. Strange that these fragile-looking acers come into leaf before our more robust native trees, most of which still have their winter bareness. It must be the longer daylight hours that trigger their buds.
There are tiny blue flowers on the rosemary shrubs, and small purple ones on the heather. The gorse is studded with bright yellow. The periwinkle is a mass of purple and dark blue. There are some magnificent magnolias full of creamily exotic flowers, which have always struck me as almost unreal.
By next week there will be the first clematis and a lot more tulips. Still to come are the magnificent blues of the cyanothus trees and the wonderful reds and scarlets of the rhododendrons and azaleas.
Arguably the Spring is even more glorious in this country than the summer, especially if you happen to appreciate blossom on the trees more than green leaves, and if you prefer the varieties of Spring flowers to those of the summer.
This particular Spring has been more glorious than any I can remember. Parts of England have had thirteen consecutive days of bright sunshine and blue skies, as the high pressure system continued to hang around and shield us from the usual cloudy and wet westerly anti-cyclones and the northerly gales.
Zen tells us to pay attention to nature and to learn from nature. Nature, the natural world, has the power to inspire awe and wonder, and through this power to lead us along the Way towards better living, to character development and enlightenment. The mere observation of incredible beauty in both form and colour refreshes and recharges our jaded spirits.
Thanks to the weather and the wonders of Spring it seems to me there’s a change in most people out in the streets, which seem weirdly calm and quiet. And not just in Devon. Last week in Broadway Market in the East End there were masses of people out enjoying the sun, even people picnicking on the grass in London Fields. In March!
Last winter was the best in living memory as well - the coldest overall for a century, but many more bright and sunny days than normal, and the best and deepest snowfalls for decades.
I think it’s more than coincidence that my journeys along 700 miles of motorways and city streets this week, travelling between Devon, London and Hastings, have been as pleasant and hassle-free as I’ve ever known. Well done the drivers of England! Long may it continue!
Year of the Ox
So far the Year of the Ox is living up to expectations.
Last year’s Rat year began a new cycle, and was seismic in many, many ways. The sense of breaking with the past was immense. The near-collapse of capitalism, which has been shaken to its very foundations, echoed the collapse of communism in 1989/90. Huge sums of public money have been poured into repairing and propping up what's left of the old financial system.
The Year of the Rat brought about the beginning of vast numbers of people starting to question old assumptions about values, money, economics, the way they live, and their quality of life.
There was the rise of Obama and the demise of Bush and Cheney. A truly seismic event if ever there was one. The felling of those two arseholes, those twin towers of evil. The World Enslaved Centre, or the World Corrupt and Depraved Centre. The Project for the New American Century! Ha! What a project it turned out to be. The ‘Washington Consensus’ is well and truly a pile of rubble.
Clearly the Ox year is about building on last year’s beginnings, and recreating our world, re-imagining our lives, taking a fresh look at politics, economics, finance, business, social policy, equality, climate change, sustainability, education, etc. Those that don’t participate don’t deserve a say. No play, no say.
G20
Next week, dammit, Oxzen is going to be away on the other side of the planet just as huge events unfold in London - the meeting of the G20 and massive demonstrations in the City and elsewhere, when people will at last take to the streets in an organised way and make clear their demands to what is the nearest we currently have to a World Government. It’s going to be very interesting.
My advice is to book a day’s holiday, wherever possible, and either join in the various demonstrations, or stay at home and watch what happens live on News 24. Or possibly do both. Hopefully the BBC’s coverage of events will be re-run throughout the evening on News 24. There’s bound to be plenty to watch and to think about. There’s a hell of a lot of anger waiting to be expressed, and a hell of a lot of demands to be voiced. This is the Big One.
There were two very good pieces in the Guardian on Monday on pages 24 and 25 under the headline, Grave new world: hard choices leaders face to solve the crisis. It behoves everyone to read carefully and to form their own opinion.
Larry Elliot, the economics editor, “suggests five areas for leaders at next week’s G20 summit to focus on”, in which he describes the need for a new economics, reform of the IMF, tougher global regulation, etc.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/22/larry-elliott-proposals-for-g20
Aditya Chakraborty, under the heading ‘The pursuit of happiness’, says: “Forget growth: let’s focus on wellbeing”. Some interesting thoughts there on The Art of Living, which is probably worth a google as well. We’re talking here about rethinking our entire attitude to who we are and why we do what we do, as well as re-making the entire global web of economic and cultural relationships.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/22/gdp-economic-growth-happiness-wellbeing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2009/mar/23/globalrecession-financial-crisis
Katharine Ainger wrote a good opinion piece in the Guardian this week - on the G20 and 'global social movements'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/26/anticapitalism-protest-recession-g20
Dr Jonathan Sachs
His Thought for Today focused on the transformations that are due to global communication technologies. Are we equal to the challenge of thinking in global terms, realising that we share a common fate? Only by turning outward can we create a movement for change. Moving from national pride to a new age of global responsibility.
Education
More headlines this week about the Primary Curriculum Review and its implications for schools - more right-wing commentators getting hot under the collar about the possibility of teaching kids to use Facebook and Twitter, and dropping the teaching of history. Hilarious. Those bastards sense the beginnings of a fightback against all they’ve done to diminish the rights of children and to destroy the work that had gone on over two or three progressive decades to make education and learning in this country fit for the needs of children in the 21st, and not the 19th, Century.
Not that it was ever fit for purpose, even in Dickens’ lifetime, when the first national network of state-run schools was constructed. Children should NEVER have been so inhumanly treated. They should never have been made to sit passively and silently focused on a teacher who saw his/her role as doling out imperial gallons of facts, and been punished if they failed to do so.
This morning we hear that the NUT and the NAHT have got together to formulate motions which they’ll put to their respective annual conferences this Spring demanding that this year’s KS2 SATs will be the last of them. Leaving aside the fact that these two large and potentially powerful organisations should have done this a decade ago, in fact prior to the imposition of this evil idea, this is incredibly positive news. My flabber is ghasted. This is seismic. I really didn’t imagine, after all this time, that they were up to such sensible collaboration.
Having given the government notice that they’ll no longer collaborate with such anti-child, anti-teacher evil fucking nonsense, it will only remain for their members to have absolutely no further truck with either coaching kids for the tests or indeed implementing them. What’s the government going to do? Sack them all?
Gandhi said this about chasing targets and results:
"He who is ever brooding over the result, often loses nerve in the performance of duty. He becomes impatient and then gives vent to anger and begins to do unworthy things; he jumps from action to action, never remaining faithful to any. He who broods over results is like a man given to the object of senses; he is ever distracted, he says goodbye to all scruples, everything is right in his estimation and he therefore resorts to means fair and foul to attain his end".
If that sounds like New Labour and the majority of Westminster’s political establishment, and their obsessive whipping of public servants towards often unattainable targets and results, then so be it. Ed Balls’ instant repost to the unions’ statement was to the effect that headteachers had better not get involved in any test boycotts because they’ll be breaking the law. Tough talk, Mr Ed.
I wonder what’s better, and which is right - breaking an immoral politician-made law, or doing what’s right for children and teachers? Gandhi would have known. Gandhi took on the whole of the British state and its empire, without resort to arms or violence, and won. He was thrown into prison for his beliefs, and still stuck to doing what he knew was right. Is it too much to expect for headteachers to do the same? Especially if they have the vast majority of the public and parents backing them and urging them to do what is right.
Never mind a ballot of their members for a SATs boycott. The NUT and NAHT need to launch a major campaign against the vile SATs and league tables’ terror and then ballot the English public. No need to bother with Scotland and Wales - they have no truck with SATs anyhow.
http://www.youmeworks.com/clingfree.html
Public Sector Workers Unite Against Blunkett!
The Blunk lumbered into action this week with a Guardian column expressing astonishment that the bloody ungrateful public sector workers are telling pollsters that they’re not going to vote New Labour next time. His point is that under a Tory government many of them will lose their jobs through budget cuts, and the bastards should recognise how much the public sector has been expanded under Blair & Brown.
The world’s most hideous politician, (after Hazel Blears - what is it with these Northern twat politicos?), ought to take a moment to reflect on the fact that the public sector workers care more about the people they serve and being true to their own professionalism than they do about looking after their own job security. For that they deserve applause.
Cameron has said that the NuLabour targets regime is vile and must be scrapped, and professionalism and local autonomy must be restored to the public services. So why not vote for him? What’s not to vote for? Blunkett, of course, as a dinosaur trade unionist thinks only in terms of how many jobs he can create or preserve for ‘the workers’ - what he sees as operatives in miserable results factories.
He can’t understand either that many of us have very long memories and we still hate his guts (and Blair’s, and NuLabour’s) for what he did to education post-1997 - not only retaining Woodhead as his stick to beat the teaching profession, but going even further than the Tories would have done in micromanaging education through central diktat, publishing league tables, making Ofsted even more nasty and vindictive, payment and promotion by results, focusing exclusively on test and exam data, etc, etc.
We remember well his words to those who work in the most challenging schools - “No excuses for failure.” We’ll never excuse his failures, or those of NuLabour, through over 10 years of nasty neo-conservative dictatorship.
The only way we’d vote for his party next time would be if they came out and recanted, admitted that they’ve done all the wrong things, and declared their intention to reverse all their policies on running the public services, including privatisation and marketisation.
But that won’t happen. As the Blunk says in his column, “The government has to avoid blinking”. So carry on Blunking. Blinking is something the Blunk will never do. Never has, never will. His belief in his own infallibility is absolute. And he pays no attention whatever to what every sane, intelligent person had been saying for years.
His, and NuLabour’s, approach to improving public services has been entirely on the Soviet model. Invest in setting up more and more collective farms and tractor factories. Install compliant managers who agree to chase output targets. Give them precise directions as to how to achieve their targets. Punish them ruthlessly if they fail to reach their targets (No excuses for failure), and then wonder why the bloody ingrates hate them and rebel against them, plus the tractors are rubbish and crop production generally diminishes. Animal Farm indeed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/26/labour-conservatives-local-government-nhs
Whitechapel
This week sees the reopening of the newly refurbished and extended Whitechapel gallery. A full-sized tapestry of Picasso’s Guernica, which normally hangs in the United Nations building in New York, is the centrepiece of the first exhibition of the gallery. This is clearly a must-see show, and it’s brilliant that the gallery has had these improvements.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/26/pablo-picasso-guernica-spain-war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/mar/17/whitechapel-gallery
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2009/mar/17/architecture-tour-whitechapel-art-gallery
.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)