Monday 31 December 2007

Blind side

Editing and history are a strange combination. Listening to the documents 'released' under the thirty year rule, about the political difficulties of the last  Labour government, the Message was very clear. 'Plus change'. The editing was so very careful you see. Stories which were actually rather unrelated, if taken in there full context, were juxtapose to make them appear to be the same (Cameron and Thatcher are rather different, but you would not of got it from the program). The Message was simple. Here we go again - this is the End of the Labour government  -which is of course a cheap story in itself. History is then made to appear  'current', and a plot line which the media have been pushing for the last three months or so,  made into almost into  'historical fact' in its own right.
 Problem of course is the very claim makes this ruth so much the more likely.


For more of the same go
here

Saturday 22 December 2007

The sad truth out Youth

Was it just me - or was Nick Cleggs failure to know the 'fairy Tale of New York', the oddest thing in the news last week. One wonders whether than man ever does christmas shopping at all ( surely why the song is so popular, is it is less irritating than all the rest of the Christmas-play horrors).
What of course it does show is the deep problem about wanting to have 'young' political leaders. If one is under fifty, and capable of going through all the tedious rigmarole necessary to be elected leader of a political party, one is almost be definition a Geek. 
In effect two political parties are therefore lead now by that weirdest of creatures, Geeks who have been puffed up into pretending they are some how normal. Men who are then, even as we speak 'studying normality', as best they may. Men who will strive to be as typical as possible: Until of course one has those delicous moments (like last weeks) when they are suddenly caught on the hop - and they abnormality is revealed to all.
 We could all have a lot of fun here! But personally, when it comes to government, and not comedy  I prefer to have honest weirdo's n charge, then Geek you are striving to be normal...




For more of the same go:
here

Sunday 9 December 2007

Whispering Pomposity

That is really what the problem is. We are all used to the problem of chinese whispers and the rumour mill. We all know a truth based on what they said to them about those, who had it from 'thingy' is at best the worst and most dubious of possible 'truths'. 
 Problem of course is that are News coverage is now simply the media playing a version of elaborate whisperings. And yet here on needs to get the problem. The problem is not that this is so. In a sense of course it is so (and most news has always been this). What however appears different is firstly that any pretense that anything else is possible has long since slipped by the wayside. This by itself would perhaps not be that significant, as the news would simply devolve into farce. It is the second point that is the killer. The Media has not dropped its 'truth claim'. On the contrary as the truth become more and more the game of a whispering campaign,the urgency and even more the pomposity by which that truth is viewed by the media has become more and more extreme. With the result that anyone doubting the elaborate 'factions (their world) of he media, is attacked without mercy.
Now that is the killer...

For more of the same go to 


here

Wednesday 5 December 2007

That is alchemy!

It is a strange thing about the law: it makes thing seem serious!
 Take the current 'finicial scandal' consuming the Labour party. The degree of wrong doing is minimal. A new raft of legislation passed in 2000 to prevent widescale corruption is being used to beat the labour party of really rather small levels of corruption... I for one am left wondering so what?
The real joke being that the conservatives are also fund raising and using rather dodgy practices to do so. And yet because they remain in the letter of the law these practices are invisible - in spite of the fact they are rather more shady and suspect then anything the Labour party was doing!
That is the magic! 

For more of the same go 

here