expense

i know i have said it ad nauseam, but every time, and I really do mean every every time I here journalists on the any media organization knocking Mp's expenses I wonder about the expenses account of those who run these organisation.I mean here that I can easily understand why mp's need expense accounts. the entire point of parliament was to have people from the otherside of the railing to not just enter into government but also but to be at a disadvantage when compared to Eton toff's when they do so. I accept ht the result is that certain people will abuse the system. so be it, as many a Toff's also abuse their own wealth - that is the nature of wealth: One cannot therefore level the playing field without allowing abuse to happen.
i understand i say the expense accounts of Mp's. What I do not understand (and wish to know more about) is why the expense account of the already rich and priveleged should be augmented by expense accounts?

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Quesions

Why have articles that ask questions?
Why have articles that self right be asking leading questions?
Why mannufacture the question, and therefore the scandal?
Why do proper journalism whe you can ask leading questions?
Who want anything other than opinion peicies inspired by leading questions?
Why ,muk abut being the reporter when you can get most of the fame and all the glory asking daffy questions?


- why indeed!

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fantasy merchant

Poor old Hilary - she forgot in he desire to be in the fist lady who became president movie, that the movie makers of current political life are firmly the news agencies. they make a fantasy (Obama is a fantasy candidate, and the only real question is about whether one supports him or not is whether that fantasy is allowed to remain past november). but they also make the expose of all fanatises (save their own). The game of a politician is therefore to always ensure that one is in a sequence of 'films' (that is of fanatisies) that sup;port ones over all career (one needs not to be type casts, and need the right smatter of likeable villians as well as heros, one also needs cameos) Poor of hilary main probe is that she does so want to direct her own movie, an 'arrogance' which will in all likelihood cost here the candiacy..



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Stroppy

Presumable Obama was so mad about the passport ( for Godsake what does one expect, by the way I am sure doctors laugh at my medical records I certainly hope so, and it is surely one of the oerks of a boring job is that one gets to see the records of 'famous people, and if we do not like this `i suggest we pay more but that is another matter?). is because it puts him back in the role of victim, rather friend of Osama's friend, the preacher.
unless of course there was something really radicle in the records - like say Obama was less African Amercian, and more Hawain than he claims)


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It is the car that one worries about

So Cameron breaks the traffic laws.
I bet the man also wants to fiddle his tax expenses, and has driven when not sure exactly what the limit is and speed (from time to time ) and.... like pretty well everyone else. Only difference is of course that we have not set ourselves up as a role model, and allowed people in to witness our (cod and contrived) moral purity as family man ( god, the arrogance of thinking the voters want to get to know about a balding toff , gets one down). nor do we ll have a car following us - letus hope that also drove o the pavement to avoid the one way street.
But hey- I wonder how the journalists were following him - it must of been quite a cavalcade! a fact which is certainly more interesting that is uniquely boringif pompos fool.


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It would be easier with an Axe

Okay, so we have have added t the role of china;s policemen the roles of stern critique, worried friend and frighten bunny. We therefore wheel in Chines politicins and allow them o look slimy and disengenious on airtime (and hardly bother hiding our distain). while politicians indulge in attacking china (and yet of course still tl to it): moreover these attacks are of the distinctly anxious kind. we thunder out abuse, and then worry about the consequences - thereby confirming our role as frightened (if very very very slightly defiant bunny) and China's role as game keeper. And yet as any worried friend we d not really mean to cary any of this home. No sanctions or Olympic boycott (when china suggests we are doing this we get jumpy), and so no teeth.We will still allow the ludicorus spectacle of the Olympic Dream t continue and China to preen itself as a world power.
Well it is I suppose nice to now who is boss.


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China's police

Is it me?
Have I mist something- some plot line which meant everything has changed?
Why is it that the olympic dream has turned us into China's Global police force -ensuring that Tibetans right to protest is denied everywhere (greece, Indian Nepal...)
I always suspect that the olympic dream was little better than a Cola add (and therefore only really good at tooth rot), but never credited it wit the power to turn us all into the repressive wing of a horrid regime.
oh well naive of me I suppose- i should have had more faith the power of nightmare!


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Game of pictures and Language

It goes without saying that politics is not about issues any more so much as langauge. A party knows it is on to a good thing when the daft catch phrases it uses (say Britian is Broken) become the nation by lines - and so it becomes impossible to talk anything other than the langauge of that party (currently Tory).
this is the pojnt where all serious commentary on that parties daft or malevolent policies break down ( i have lost count of the number of schemes the Tories are running to redistribute wealth back from poorest to richest in society); as one can no more critique the masters of one language, than critique the Queens minted english.
it is also at this pojnt of course that the other dimension also plays in. You know that myth that mistakes youth, and smarm for charisma and mysterously turn a forty something man with a receeding hair line and a face like a Babies bum into a hansom family man - whose face to replicated across the internet - and so it enters into every where....
Or to put it another way politics is no more about government it is rather the science and art of dream invasion. When a part manages like any other virus to spread everywhere it wins, irrespective of its policies.
Oh God - I wish their as a vaccine against tory though.


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I prefer real thought myself

Racism in all its guizes of course one of the ways we cope with the complexity of modern life.
i mean it.
The world is all together too complex. The means by which we understand that complexity to tricky (hey it involves number for Godsake!)
It is so much easier to have a nice little series of stories about the fates of different ethnic groups in modernity. Nice little innocent stories (they usually start innocent enough), that provide vignettes was to how we all feel (we can all be Back or all Jewish at times).
we can even run an entire election based on those stories (Clinton and Obama less titans in themselves, more a titan of choice about which dream should be made real, and which lost).
all nice innocent stuff.
the problem always with racisim is not its present (in someways that is inevitable). is rather the fact that heir is not rational line to be drawn between these innocent stories and the blind hatred we all know so well.
For when one chortles or feels proud or perplexed or whatever, when faced with another racial story, do remember to also watch the madness that is already growing in ones mind.

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Listing lusts

So Mp's have to have a second home and state pay. in a sense this is fair enough (as long as the state itself keeps an interest in the property - Like gets to keep what is spent the money on after the Mp leaves parliament: we would render Mp's homless and out of a job, in one more- which might keep them keen - But tht is all really another point).

 that is it is fair enough that the sate gives some help given that the affairs of sate impose long hours and demand proximity to London. it is at least as fair as the expense account of the best paid celebrity journalists (who would not stop to John Lewis). 

Perhaps the real 'sin' lies in the very nature of democracy. That is every Mp, all 650 or so of them must have the same right (unlike the very few over rewarded journalists). from which it follow their expense list is fixed by a department store's prices. and also the over all cost of all them having such a right is rather high. Far higher than say the exorbitant costs the relatively few well paid journo's and business classes can claim.

The result is that the Mp's are available for ridicule in both direction. they at once have expenses on the 'cheap' (by department store), but also excite envy in having them at all (and charging us all for them). 

 in short it makes a prefect media story (and takes all pressure of their own expense accounts). the more serious problem for the rest of us though is how else does one democractise therather  necessary perks of a job ( I suppose we cold pay Mp's more or not at all...)?

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Slarmed I am sure

It starts to look postively dialectic - when he choice is the next election in America and Britain is likely to be between a young fresh candidate who has never really done anything save look ernest, and make speeches, and someone emersed in the very stuff of government.
A real kind of choice that. or rather a real vignette about the kind of world we think we are in - perhaps all hope is not lost!
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Budjet of words

One can of course hear the sigh of releif on budjet day amongst the journalistic classes. here is a day they need do no real work. all they must do is toddle down to Westminster, have a few very enjoyable lunches, listen to a series of boring speeches (which change rather little these days), and Bob's your uncle - story.
Phew that is one day when work is carefully delimited (or left to the ban counters).

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Aping it up.

Real problem of course with the media s they must have a story. Real problem with a story is that it needs action to resolve it, and if that action is linked to politics, it means the story must be led to legislation (and so resolution in some manner). Real problem then of course is that we are all bound up in the kind of legislation the media launched a witch hunt to get. 

 A right hogwash for us - but hey it makes another story...

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Give us a Break

Oh I hate the Cameron Phraze (lifted from the military) that Britian is somehow broken in someway.

 it is a phraze that is at once vaccous (how does a constitution break, it is not that kind of thing, it is either always broken or never broken, it does not break) . But also clearly self serving as he thinks of himself as God's gift by which it can be mended. And dangerous, as this break is meant to focus in its very unclarity all the poisonous feelings our society hatches up about itself and those who live in it. trouble with conjuring those daemons is that one has to be a willy politician to play with that fire, and more merely an over promoted eton toff come advertising excutive...

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Oh is that it?

Just a quick question really.
Watching Daily show, I noticed Jon Stewart went out of his way to be mice about McCain. Presumably this is a ploy to make him unelectable to the conservative base the republican party appears to need? Well it is just a thought.

Minor Royality

I suspect it really should become as no surprise that the minor royalty and Celeb culture are synonmous. Thinking abut it I had the lines of influence the wrong way around. it is not (in spite of what the self serving media might claim (the minor) royals who ape the Celebs, but the celbs who were always aping the royals. Problem is it does into make it any less more acceptable. Problem is that is does not make one ay the less sick of royality and celebrity - until I for one start to dream of that sharp toothed female once again....


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Keeping the Soldiers sweet

Perhaps at the bottom of the talk about a military covenant lies one really hard fact. Politicians power these days is very restricted. There are almost no real laws they can pass that will do anything. The result is that they endlessly tinker and re-tinker with those pointless powers which remain to them. Be that as it may. What is certainly the case is that what is led pecualiarly in the power of politicans is WAR. it is all they can really do, and know that they are powerful. They therefore become addicted to it. 

Soldiers are of course right in the front line of this addiction. More than that, they are also right in the front line of the politicians ego. One needs to keep the military sweet to do anything these days. It is no wonder that at this momement  the shop stewards of the military (its senior brass), start to talk about a covenant (first we had ever heard of it - but it sounds better than work to rule), and thereby as any 1970's union boss would understand, start to flex new found political muscle.

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