Don't you think

given that all government policy appears to be about helping an apparently randomly selected group buzz word group -the modern deserving poor -be they single parent, hard working families hoodies, the young, the old... -and that parties self consciously distinguish themselves by each year choosing a certain selection - ti would be far fairer if at the stat of every year we had a national lottery, in which the buzz word groups were parcelled out -one could I guess even have a eurovision-style worthy poor contest each year to decide you was in the hat - well it would make more sense then the current hocus-focus...


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he does not just look like a prick

Now about this on for an endurance test.Blane or some other self serving idiot could hold their breath until David Cameron says something not meally mouthed and ambigous.
the Effort would certainly kill Blane, and with any luck it would show Cameron to be the prick he also sounds like.
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Peronalised inflation

It is of course an old joke. when is inflation not inflation - when it is a rise in house prices. That is not inflation but rather an increase in personal wealth (so good).
That is it is not inflation when very few are actually using the realizing the wealth, when they are merely gloating over it (an no matter if this gloat is enough to bugger up the rest...)


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History spits rather than reapeats

strange isn't it that the last few weeks saw three things. firstly the assumption that there would (given the price of fuel) be another fuel blockade.
Secondly that this very expectation meant the blockade when is duelly came was ineffective and unproductive. History does not repeat.
Except of course it does - as fuel shortages did duly come but not because prices were bankrupting hauliers but because they were making tanker drivers greedy!
History did then repeated but for another different reason.Or perhaps better it repeated only by splitting motives form effect. the same thing was attempted for the same reason (but failed) the same result was actually effected (but for quite the opposite reason).
History repeats but t never the same way - tragedy creates joke, and jokes spark other ways to weave the tragic...

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Farce

Poor old david Daves. he has discovered the had way the odd and highly hypocritical robustness of the british system. One can abolish habbeus corpus or restrict freedom, but woe betide the person who wants to similary abuse the system to show up this abuse. For to attack established practice in this way is to open oneself up to the the full horror of the system ignoring you. One will then be left with all the other nuts (and without even a foul exhibitionist such as Mackenzie to compete against). In that place of limbo that is reserved for those who run against the stream....

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Watched

okay - it is fairly obvious I will not like CCTV given the other blogs here. But the real problem is not that it invades privacy. As a matter of fact it does not,as most are switched off. The real problem is not that it creates a false sense of security (which it does), so much as it plays to a naff and naive access in British politics. i mean the axis that has at one end politicians who are desperate to do something (popular), and the people who are desperate to have some act of popularism (The hang the Czar lobby) enacted (and it harm none). The camera's therefore represent a comprises, something appauling popularist, something that appeals the the lynch mob -mentality is done, and done often and cheaply.
Technology is therefore used to placate the mob or at least allow them something more than they had been allowed. the worry is that is technology allows more and more things this Lynch mod bias will come to constantly distort what we doing with it (think DNA data base) and therefore where we spend money. the Mob agenda then seeps into the kind of technology we fund and therefore how and when are change our societies through that technology.
Now there really is a frightening thought!

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criss-crucified

The story of the losing discs is one of those stories about the fault line fast changing technolgies bring to the world. it is impossible to keep up. it is useless (and impossible) to homogenouify different systems. The result is that every feature of modern life is criss cross with technologies of different ages, and different purposes. it cold be no other way. As long as this is the case (and it will be as long a technology changes rapidily) then one will be faced with a simple choice. Use thetechnology to the maxim of its potential and risk cock up. or else police the entire system, worry about every detail, and restricting access at each and every point. One thereby mimises the chance of one kind of risk by restricting what is allowed across the entire system while also opening oneself up to all the abuses of power this restriction can cause.
Not much of a choice really.

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Oh well!!!

Perhaps that one of the offshoots of excess privatization of the service industries is that it removes the desire to go green. i mean by a quirk of fate many of the greenest of measures (insulation or wind power or solar) are very local very small scale affairs. Large companies do not make a profit there therefore. From which two things follow. The politics of the environment becomes caught up in the class struggles of yester year (people versus big business), and there is little or no impetus to follow throw a green agenda (as the wrong people make money). The entire debate become thereby infused with apathy and inappropriate class hate - which is of course beautifully British and wonderfully useless!

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One of those mysteries I suppose

It has been a lovely game of rumour and inuendo. For the last two to three weeks it seems to me very much the case that the British Media have be aching for a 'fuel protest', with a hunger that needs to be seen to be beleives. they are even now in the process of trying to create a panic out of a strike by 5% of the tanker drivers. the deep question I suppose is why - perhaps they want the story of Brown failure or success? Or perhaps they are running out of copy!

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The Game of Shsss

Cannot say it now you know. Cannot say the A level is really gone down the tube. not when pupils are taking it. D not want to discourage them.
Pity that we have created an impossibly daffy a Level in the first place though. I for one as teacher find that endlessly discouraging
Pity also we will only listen to the debate now, when the exams are being taken. Pity then this is the only time one cannot attack the exams and be hear - even in that hearing is the shut up of not now.
naff that.

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Another Bad sign

It is of course a bad bad sing when people use the cock-ups of the other side to critique the party of government. one side much up with the moronic whoops a daisy and the otherside get whoospy dasied instead.
It makes one hope that somehow the economy goes right and Brown becomes unpopular again - to whoospie daisy the critics. (actually given they will keep their jobs that till do little or no good)

assymetrical

it is beautiful really.- faith or habit.
the media have decided that this is the moment they will go for Labour. This is the moment we are right back in 1978. this is the moment it all goes wrong.
And so we the spin endless stories of Brown Difficulties (real or made up), and gives us endless accounts of the country going to the dogs. What to they do Cameron about on the week the Tory party was plagues once again with corruption allegations? His parting!
(what is of course funny is that a man who is clearly losing his hair wanted to play ball with this. Maybe isis trying to convince us that he is not losing it? Or maybe he shared the media worries that is he is allowed to say anything serious the public will twig what a daffy right ring git he is - safer you see to talk of hair).
A far safer ploy given the plot line is Gordon Brown's demise anyway.
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Truth!

Truth also was an odd construction anything long enough and it feels true. Say it with others and it really feels true. say it will feeling and it feels almost certain. Care about it being true for whatever reason (and their can be a multitude of such reasons) and it really will feel to be the case. Confuse it with another charm and the desire to believe what they say, and the true becomes one of those fixed public certainties: the trouble here hough is an odd one our very obession with true makes it so very easy to manufacture...

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The Mirror cracked

Suppose it is obivous, but it is pathetic that the media-politician are driving forward and defining exactly who it is who are allowed to be our politicians Ee get the politicians then who seem seems to stay human when they travel around the country repeating the same political mantra time out of mind.
We get the patient actor with a bizarre ability to be spontaneously friendly and apparently human in the least humane of situation; we get those who are capable of using their adrenalin to cope with the tedium; we get those who are prepared in the name of some mystical quasi-divine state power, to become the vice pieces of others.
Let us hope such people are actually good at ruling. ( My feeling is that it would be easier and cheaper and just as effective to draw straws though!)


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The Twin faces of racism

I is a mystery really. it used to be an age old rule that political parties could eclipse the power of such parties as the BNP, but adopting rascist policies themselves. Time and time again the policy was 'adopted' and the parties tool on aspects of the extreme right. So what has happened now? i mean we have partied which are more abhorently xenophobic than ever before and a BNP thriving? Heaven forbid that is a 'global' economy the issue is no longer race or even culture but rather fear that others are doing or will do better than we are. For is it is (and it sometimes sounds that way) we are all in for the roughest of rides...)


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New Labour legacy

It is a real legacy (if not a really noble one). New labour have found the 'Poor'. I mean for years and years the Poor were simply to be oppressed and ignored (by conservative and then Labor). Now they are yet another political (as so meaningless) term to be bandied about (rather than to be wooed). Cameron makes cynical political capital claiming to talk for the poor (Clegg does the same). the claim is nonsense (look at Tory policy to see that, well as much as they have them). But that is not the point. the point is that New Labour have defined this category as something which matters, a word not to be lost (well for the next few years at least).
a legacy of sort I suppose!
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Cut it out

Aspiration to tax cut?
a code for let us make political capital talking about hopes we never mean to achieve (and are not really desirable anyway), but which will excite greed in people now, and make them more likely to vote for us.
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Where to Begin

If is he problem with biology that is has no respect for morality. It is the problem of morality that it has no ability to define itself beyond the opinion poll or artificially constructed consensus, that is beyond politics. Politics therefore starts to see into the world of chemicals, cells, and unborn things. only problem is that to define what it is doing their it needs not moral criteria but religious ones. At which point everything become utterly problematic, as we never have been able to define an acceptable axis in which to have a politics of god...
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Brief notes of media debating styles.

1). Splicing: the rules for splicing are simple enough.

a) wait until one political opponents slip up big time. Warning you will need to wait to the critical momement when the media frenzy help to itself has reached fever pitch. Hint as a rule of thumb if the story does not run without your help in the first place, never attempt t splice it. Many a good splice is ruined by jumping onto the bandwagon too early. You Will need large complex stories to achieve splicing bliss.

b)  the look for other sequence of event to claim is like this story. There is a real art to this move. One needs o choose these event carefully. one needs a degree of disgruntlement with these over event, and yet not too much. The disgruntlement will mean that your plublic will want to dislike the policy, and your aim is to allow that distain to be expressed 

c) one then produces speeches attempting to link the to stories. here one must simply assume they are linked, describe in the same way (and not attempt any reasoned argument).Tthe aim is to woo people into expressing their loathing for one though there distain for the other. There need not be a direct link therefore, merely a president.

d) Once the link is make prod the issue once or twice to stoke up the fire a little, and then move on. never linger around the blaze you have caused in case it engulf (or illumines) you. So once light run like hell, onto the next one!

e) enjoy yourself! this siam  game so keep relishing it. To attempt to  play this with a Po face is to court disaster.

2) The Game of Mee Too. Another political classic. A game of two Halfs. One must claim to see a  Mee too in the policy of others while "mee tooing" their policies yourself.

a) the cardinal rules of this game is not to start too dam early. never game a Mee Too, unless your political opponent as all too obviously borrowed one policy from you, the more publically the better.

b) You must therefore listen to what the other lot are saying rather carefully. they must look shifty  when they deny the Mee Too, 

c) however once One Mee Too is established the flood gates are open. the rules change utterly the game is now to claim other Policies are a Mee Too.

 Here two moves are advised. the simplest, for beginner involves a list. Here the aim is simply to sound as if the other  claims are true (they need not be). the Mee Too will if done with proper panache, communicate a reality beyond the boring world of facts!

d) An alternative strategy is to explore your opponents Meet Too is a more detailed manner. Seeking to exploit the differences between you, while allowing the too of your are rather similar.

 On the alternative side, if you a genuinely  practicing the gentle art of Mee too,and what to get away with it, you will need these two additional rules.

e) Remember the best defence strategy in the game is to allow your opponents Mee Too may be true (never admit it, merely imply, without saying the argument has been in common currency for a while), but claim your version of it is better. You gain  the political benefit then and negate the Mee Too, For primacy will not necessarily beat competency.

f) do note however you must be careful before allowing yourself this last move. If the policy was pants in the first place, better to let it be forgotten than to take it yourself. You will be blamed if it fails, and no one will remember the policy was not yours in the first place!

g) Do not be tempted to actually Mee Too o often (or to claim it in others too often), there is a real art in the timing of the Mee.

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Oddball

Since when has Politics involved an unlikely and very unlovely splicing of a game of football and the game of government?
ell for a while now.
But there is something really odd don't you think when the language of politics (with its teams, fight backs pep talks) and the language of football coalesce. The Game of Politics (which the media love so very very very very much- well it makes story seas and cheap) , is caught up with drafting endless new laws, that actually have to be enforced - that actually can (and very often do) bugger up peoples lives.
We ((i mean the country) end up with useless laws whose sole purpose was to rescue a government from it whole, and idiotic leaders, who work as political mascots rather than as leaders.
The point to think again about the system of government? Or to just relax and 'enjoy the show' - a deep problem for the west.
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Tyranicde

It is always the moment one knows a government is on the way out, when even its supporters cease really to care about voting to it. Phrases like last straw, and made me realize, drip of the media, and with them call time on Gordon Brown. problem is of course we have lived with his desire for the top job so long that not only are we rather borred by him, but also his very all too obvious ruthless desire for the job for so many years gave us a weird expectation of what he would do. I mean would he live up to his own billing, and Prove that he was the lost mesiah of the Labour party (the man who it was worth sacrificing the careers of numerous other big labour beasts for - I mean Ried or Clarke)? Or was he a silly little man with an over blown ego, and a large grudge which he mistook for ability?
The problem for Brown was that the second answer was always the more likely one, as Lost Mesiahs ares so hard to be in the flesh (and so easy to stage in the fantasy),and rather readily become olly Hary.
the Probem for the Country is that is our desire to reject the Sat and Laurel of the Labour party, we will end up woht that arch insinuator, and all round twerp Cameron (perhaps a Harold Lloyd figirue?)


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GREED GAME

Always the problem is if you give someone your shirt they are likely to want your trousers in the end/ the game of government is therefore to ensure a lightfooted genorousity (so that each interest group does not organize around what they WANT next. Trouble is the game of political funding is to offer people hope of greeds to come. the real game of being a prim minister is the game of poll dancing - you must always titillate without ever offer climax.
Are you volunteering to tell this to Gordon Brown?
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Bloody Mystery

I suspect the epitaph of Brown is less one of treachery and more one of loyality to his own creatures. why is he screwed? Because the kind of people (the balls) as this would who are prepared to plot with you for ten years and work against everyone else interest (biting off the heads of any potential rivals), are almost by definition lousy minsters. And poor of Brown, who seems to feel a blinding loyality to such creatures does not seem to realize it!

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Test

It is an old an hackneyed problem. To test one needs to know what one is testing. the problem with public tests is that they are just that public, and means that schools perform like so many bloody infant-phenomena ballerina at a school dance. Which might be okay (after al this process is only slightly more random than flipping a coin, even if it is most expensive, but in its being a little worse than doing nothing is rather good for a government policy!)Te really problem then coms that no one can be aloud to fail (too badly). t which point the entire thing becomes utterly problematic as are forced to orbit not around 'objectivity' (whatever that is) but the crying political need to get a certian range of result from schools and pupil. exams and school, minster and journalists move off into a three way gang-bang and all claims not to be anything more useful are lost.

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Virtual wars part two

The choice for an american politician is facing up to a beautiful battle between the virtual (Obama and the promised Kingdom) and the also purely actual (MacCain, been there done that a while ago). In these fights it has to be said the virtual has all the advantages (the media) and tends to win (blair major, Clinton Bush. Bush Gore etc) as selling democracy is always selling hope not memory. the only problem will be is the media suddenly in the interests of their paymaster) turn all actual on Obama and demand reality form his, which must be the hope of the republicans...
A fact that makes this rather an interesting watch.


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look at me again!

It is an odd game Cameron is playing - or perhaps he has never lived in Crewe? To go to Crewe and to argue that they will be daft enough to support the tories in order to hurt Brown, when that plan will help the Tories most (and them least) seems to rather misjudge. Why they might will ask help the smarmy party of southerners and rich kids who will not helping them much. hitting the government id one thing, but helping the Tories in another, and it would be better if Cameron allowed for that fact (that is if he still can, and if the cancer of look a me-ism, which eroded the sanity of PM's has not already infected him, which seems rather probable)...

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Thing about virtual wars

It is of course the trouble with virtual conflicts. they cannot really end. the Hilary versus Obama fight cannot therefore ever really end, as who can win the fight between the rival claims of women and Black-Americans.There is no ration point one can break off. It follows that there is a deep belief that his fight will age right trough the American election (to the joy of MacCain). as indeed would be the case if that conflict is aloud to remain in all its virtual glory (destroying the democrats). They can only hope that when it comes to actually politics and the task of really voting for presidents with policies then the virtuality will vanish into a whiff of old memory, which is after all the normal state of affairs (voters in virtual conflicts are all mouth). the only real problem here is that the media are th mouth merchants, and will want to keep that fight on rolling...
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Nelson off!

It is the problem with advertising, that it it is an open ended message. it power lies then in in ambiguity.I mean the product is always also their, and yet always with other thing. Any attack on it, or any attempt t place it in a gallery of shame is likely to come unpicked, as these extra elements demand their also also (and so comment of whether the criticism is all that advert is).
in the end the only real thing to do is to escape this full nelson, is not to engage with the advertising medium at all. Which is easier than it sounds, as it is only advertising that claims that the adverts are universal.


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Get a grip

you know what the real problem of the London Olmypic nonesense is? the fact that the planners (if that is what they are) have been placed in a structure that simply stops them seeing the consequences of their own actions. I mean to them 9.3 Billion or 11.8 billion pounds spent is very little different.
you try telling that to the theater groups up and own the country whose funding is being cut in the Olmypic squeeze. You tell that to the sports organization whose funding has gone. You tell that to those who have to look after heritage monument...
Their looseness will have very considerable 'extra costs' elsewhere- where the squeeze is really felt.
A fact that the very structure of the bid seems to have hidden from the bungling greedy sanctimonous fools who are responsible for it...

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I hope this is funny

Tories clearly have two new games.
the first is that old rebranding trick - the name game. conservative sounds a it like conservation at all. So they hope by having postures splicing themselves with the green party that no one will notice they are not (and never have been). tis move is all the more interesting as it allows them to pose as the bridge between big business, ecology, conservation and the country side alliance, and do it without ever a policy being drafted (or even being draftable!)
The other one is saying day and slightly enaging thing about helping the poor . I mean if you say something in a nice enough way then people at least know you mean to do it. If your policies (and they have published policies about this one) do the opposite, never mind, you tried hard. Which is then of course more than than Mr Brown,who always frowns (but who actually well occassaionaly) has policies to held (specially selected and worthy) poor.
And Jane Austen showed us one can go far in having the illusion of goodness, rather than the real thing. All the more so because if you do have the real thing,t hen any slip in you goodness will really be counted against you!


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Mr Punch and the Shrug

The person who edits the by line pictures on the BBC blog (is certainly wit. a headline about Cameron's failure to end Punch and Judy politics, has him looking like Mr Punch himself. Good thing too, if you want my opinion (anyone you is so brand/bland aware as Cameron, by and large merit such treatment..)
More importantly Cameron's claim to end punch and Judy politics is a claim he might have been able to genuinely achieve, and yet he dismisses it with a shrug. He merely says I did not want to do it, in the end (as I was looking good as Mr Punch).
one wonders how any of Cameron publicity hungry policies will similarly be sacrifice to his ego!

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Botch-alisms

It is a blending thing I guess. One of the really scary things about modernity it its botchedness. I mean take, a story about less boys (ignore the effects of Chemicals), and look at the correlation between Boy and high energy (and so often high Chemical ) foods, and the number of Boys, and all of a sudden boys become assoicated with high energy diet. The story then becomes a biological truism, and Bingo Henry vIII was right to expect his hight status wife to produce men - why else did he feed them? Be are mediveal again!

or again take a french prejudice against the English, and a Muslim loathing of the excessive Christainization of the global culture (calendar, ect), and yo get the demand the the Muslims follow their own time system (not based on GMT). A demand which of course then flies in the face of globalization: which was possibly the point!

That is to Globalize is also to botch, or to pitch what is bothced against the very process in which it was created....What a fun place the world is!

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Parti-what?

It is the trouble with 'being patriotic'. it means to things. yes to dressing up, and engaging in elabourate pagents and mock historicism, and then getting very very drunk. But No to violent racism We were here first ism. the trouble is that as the first is no doubt the equivalent to a dog weeing on a bush, it rather naturally leads to the second!


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odd...

Poverty is such an odd thing- or perhaps it is just political popularity.
I mean since Thatcher the great mantra of the governing classes is shit of the poor. New labour then added an extra bar in this mantra shit of the poor, but not the deserving poor. The deserving poor being those the Manx's son cold approve of (families, and Oap's mostly) the rest could and did go to hell ( try living off less that 5000 a year, and not being in those categories, will will have got poorer, quite alot poorer over the last ten years, i know I have).
Suddenly then this golden rule of British politics has changed. we are all worried about the poor. i mean the non deserving poor (like me). Or perhaps we are all concerned to allow other people are also deserving.. well at least some other...well at least something to tell the voter...
a guess that kind of inconstistency is the magic of democracy, it is certainly its prorogative!


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Poesy

Well at least that explains the Prescot Food bill. £4000 of funding his Bulima. One cannot help thinking that there is something beautifully symbolic in all this. Here was a scourge from the Left, taken into a reactionary right wing government, and castrated.He responds to his impotence? By going an a feeding frenzy,eating as pointlessly as capitalism consumes.

I can only think Good on you John. This is such a more honest response than say, becoming caught up in a mist of piety and self righteousness, were any attack is taken as a sing of ones own sancity (and so correctness) - aka Blair.

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Bumrush

News really ought to be about forcing one to confront what one does not know. the trouble is that we have, in our myths of a global village lost sight of what we do not know (we are all the same don/t you know). The trouble is we have then used that blindness to warp the new back into what we always wanted it to be - about us. We are after all the most important of things - aren't we?
Let us hope that the unknown (which only the elite see?) does not once again erupt...

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They said it

it is just a headline, and yet one that needs to be kept, and it sums up the problem we face. the headline runs
"Smith pledges more terror police" - what it means is clear. What is also says is clear. our trouble is what do we do about this also which currently stalks all our lives just as much as that other terror does....

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roman tradegy

After the madness and horror of the end of nero's rain Glaba suceeded. Galba was a mystery to classical writers. A man who had all the halmarks of a great emporer, and years of public service behind him, and yet made an utterly lousy one (he was assassinated in nine months or so). Sounds rather too like Brown for comfort...

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The game of me me me

So Cameron uses a trouble seat. so what one asks. well in itself this is petty and utterly boring. i do not care. What Of course is important is that he felt the need to share the way he brings up his children with us, in order to make us like product cameron. My problem is that I will never like it I guess, and so reamin painfully aware his job is meant to be to aspire to run the country, and how he potty trains his two years olds is not really of any conecern.


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The slogans say it

I admit I have always loathed Osbourne. i remember too well his Cambridge days - but that is another story.
he is clearly surpassing himself in idiotic bombastic folly at the moment. that slogan of his about roofs and sun which is as homely as apple pie (and just as bad in large doses) is surely rather a stupid one for a Tory to use. I mean it was as if the Tories never run up huge debt or as if they save money in the good times. Actually thinking about ti they were so bad at running an economy there were not many good times in the last tory government - but that is another matter...
It i therefore a slogan which as it reminds one of a certain history, reminds one of just how bad the tories really were. Classic Osbouurne them. All Bumpituos bombast with no viable (or equitable) content, and merely an irritating and under under mining refrain.


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The yong burks naff it

I doubt it is a conspiracy -more a meeting of idiocies.
What is the case is that it is clear that tories and liberals (those trimming lawyers of the election process) are running is a pack. i mean here, that given their leader are near enough identical. Both are over confident and over promoted 'young' and 'hansom' men (in politics youth or being not bald or fat is one and the same as being hansom), it then makes sense for then to operate together. if one then the other can both go on the media a supporting each other attacks (on the economy or crime) then the contrast with the current 'overblown' encombant of No 10 is clear enough (and does not need stating). it is an old lesson, that youth hunts age in packs. our trouble on the left is of course what one does about it/ that is what one does when the junior member of our own pack has left us for another young man...


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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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Put some clothes one!!!

Perhaps we need a weekly contest, for the best moment of media hypocracy in the course of a week/
My favourite undoubtly was that wonderful moment when the media criticised the politicians for running with stories which were designed to appeal to the poor innocent journalist, and make good cover stories , rather than be real viable policy.
as if that was not what the media wanted.
As if they allowed anything else but this
As if they were naive fools.
Hang on the last one might be right- but the joke was a good one none the less.

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A very modern mob

It is one of the oddities of modern mob justice, for such justice is sill the norm, that we no longer hang principles but rather we hang rights. Two grizzly murders of young omen by two different mad shits, and the call goes up - bring back the death penalty, or let is have a DNA register. Hang people, hang rights, Hang on - this is no way to govern a country. Actually perhaps i am Naive here. perhaps it is the only way a country is ever governed....

Oh well back to the drawing board.

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Another Shut up moment!

Sorry to be cantankerous, but the cancer of the fantasy poltics which is currently being wadged in the name of an immigration policy is reach Jihad proportion.
GET THIS INTO YOUR THINK HEADS: THERE IS NO PR~OBLEM WITH MIGRATION, little problem with assymleration, and very is OKAY. No one is going to come here are steal our hard stolen money.
IT WILL JUST NOT HAPPEN
So shut up and go away!!!

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Belt up!!!

Oh what fun it is to know what a 57 year old fat workaholic prime minister does on his birthday.

 I mean full marks for snide - minus several million for relevance or interest.

If one needs a report of prime minster's question (which bores me rigid - I can see that stuff in any student debating hall, at it was pathetic there too). 

But why give us the full break down?

 I do not need to like Brown to think he is a good or bad  prime minster. The fact I loath Cameron does not (I hope bias me) too much - although I think his policies are also crap. I wish however to make political judgments as 'otherwise ' as possible from personal judgments. This is rather difficult. It is surely the job of the media to help. Which is why for my money a report like this should be a hanging offence.

F

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Baby oil politics

Why have believes when being slippery is as good as a policy?

 A good question. Baby oil-Cameron is clearly a good substitute for the far more stodgy, but actually good for you Cod Liver oil-Brown.

Or a least it would be is it brand had not been tried before...

 The next election will eventually come down to a battle of memory, as much as oil. On the one hand is the world of baby oil. A world were slippery customers slip out of policies. The choice here will be whether one really wants this again. that is whether one really does want another Blair. If cameron can make us forget balir, me will do well, otherwise slip as he might, he will be pinned to a car. 

 Alternatively in the Cd liver department, Brown needs to try to make us forget so much of what he has done in the last ten years of so (so much of what he promised was so Cod). He need as then to slip himself into being good for us, and not simply disgusting.

 A battle of oily memory, of slipping out of the consequences of ones own actions.

What  a choice...

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Codexes of imbicility

There is surely some thing malevolent in the way that the BBC at least uses opinion polls. they use them as if they mean something. Not necessarily awful if daft, and yet it has one strangely horrid consequence. Ask people what they think on the street, and they will of course produce not only a rat of contraction, but also the first element that comes into their mind. i mean how many of us run after the pollster shouting I have changed by mind?
The problem is of course that the first thing that comes into ones mind, in most cases is the least sensible 'default position' of ones thought. these position has a character all of their our. they are often more angry than the normal mind, and more right-wing, by nature intolerant. all of which is dandy (and inevitable) the problem comes when they are pedalled as truth. A truth known of us share even if we would tell it to a pollster), a truth that then is taken as gospel and warps everything.


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Still hen pecked

I suppose one might put the sate of British politics down to the effect of hilarious custom.

I mean it was Browns fate for ten years to be hen pecked by a smart alec fool, who was less able at governing that him, but better at the drama of power. We all got used to these roles (and Blair of course played up to his part with aplomb). Brown then became prime minster, only to discover that while he could govern with a certain macabre efficiently enough he was utterly hopeless at the drama of power (no drama queen he).We then looked to others to play the senior role; and of course found them in Cameron and Clegg. there to god-brother of the awful, and devil sons of Blair, are drama queens par excellence.

  The effect is that Brown has swapped being the henpecked spouse of Blair (who was at least in his own party) for being the harrassed and hen pecked helpmeet of the leader of the oppostion.

More fool him!

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Just shut up!!!

Trouble of course with the media is they cannot read.

the trouble with most of the population is hat just read the media.: a case here of the idoitic reading the illerate.

Trouble with us liberals is that we like debate. We like thinking.

Trouble with thought is that us liberals know everyone should do it - it is just a question of making sure people start.

Trouble with media is that thought does not sell stories. Why read an article when you can spin off a predjudice -burning witches or liberals always did sell paper!

Which is why I suppose one would not want to be the arcj bishop at the moment (inspite of the fact is is right!)

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Hemorrhage

Well one did think it would all descend into farce. the funding issue slips into ridiculous mode when a man who knew someone who was someone's brother s accused of illegally giving £3000 or so . Raising that deep political question so what?

 Or better if this is illegal then the la is so badly drafted that normality is now illegal.

 Or maybe it simply raises the suspicion that given the BBC's funding is under review at the moment, the reporters are merely returning fire by running with any stories they can to put pressure back on the government...

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Loony Wars

Perhaps i have said this before?

No matter it cannot be said to  often. It is one of the effects of 24 hour headline hunting that we need to create conflicts which are easy and cheap to report. The easiest and cheapest of such conflicts are at home. All the more so when there is o real blood on the carpet. Elections which might be (in another light) positive in themselves (there is something rather wonderful about the Democrats either having a women or  black candidate), are turned in to an all our (if virtual) war.

 Division and are, you see,  so much easier to report than anything else...

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Classic mistakes for our times: :

Lesson 1: 

 I suppose it is comedy really - or a brief lesson in what not to do. 

Do not, when in government pass fiendishly difficult anti-corruption laws.

 All the more so never do it when the corruption that has been found was either minor or merely alleged.

 One will find if one does the laws which were to police a fantasy of corruption (a fantasy which is of course so useful to opposition), become a nightmare when passed.

 On the one hand  will be tied in pointless red tape: A situation which is all the more pointless as other parties with better layers, might mange to avoid the laws anyway...

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scars one way or other.

Problem is adulthood hurts - or at east it should do!

 I mean perhaps the mean falling out of rhyme and reason in classroom is tied to the collaspe in childhood as a state, no one (well under eight or so) is a child any more. We all scramble off as soon as possible into teenagehood, and once we are there we never seem to leave it!

 Trouble of course is that teenagehood descends on those who are not really able to 'cope' with its complexity.

Trouble is tennagehood remains to blight the life of those who should really know better, who should have move on.

Trouble is the drink industry are making a killing from all of this.

 Trouble perhaps is that all the old initiation rights for adulthood (voting, drinking, driving etc) have disappeared, leaving children to invent their own (getting drunk, and cutting themselves up).

Perhaps then we need to invent them again!

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Well what is the point of it then?

A strange admission on the part of the stock market

 they claimed this week that markets were able to cope very well with success or with failure,but hated doubt and uncertainty. But the question needs to be immediately asked was not their very purpose to mange such uncertainties? Any idiot can design an economy if everything its certain - it was the point of the market to cope with uncertanity - and if they are now claiming they cannot do it - perhaps we should start to look for another system! 

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The deep problem with Liberalism

Well  Marx said as much

 He always thought liberalism was hot air. A system of platitudes and nonsense, devoid of content or meaning. A nice set of after dinner speeches and easy attitudes. The lastestt survey of liberal values reveals this fact starkly. We might all be now professing liberal values (well like religion that is cheap), and yet when push  comes to shove behave the same as we always did (men do not d the housework, and we all use cars).

 Moreover we all when push comes to shove and w are faced with poverty and hoplessness ( the liberal values are very neatly pushed aside, and the old horrors of intolerance are once again to the fore.

 What price liberalism then?

 Some poor fluffy bunny might at this point say at least we are talking right. To which the cynical Marx would add that they 'talked right'  about poverty for almost all of human history : There has been therefore incessant talk about helping the poor, and the folly of wealth : But that was all we do. And when the society actually motivated itself to act, through the miasma of religion or imperalism, it has seldom been in the interest of a collective good (think crusades or empire here - but also note the creation of the drains).

 As ever then we remain fill of hot air and easy chat, but seldom want to take the consequences of these fine words is the hurt us in anyway at all: this is of course the deep secret of the strength of the Tory party...

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Just Stop it!

It is an unholy alliance, when the press, the law, and 'events' come together to make a life like a soap opera. I mean here the Media circus, sorry 'inquest' about the death of Diana. Personally, while she was alive  I had no liking for her, but after death I have found my sympathize shift, as every jumped up would be B movie or soap opera star has jumped onto the reality (or tragedy) TV what has become here life in death.

 In my more vicious moments I want to start removing tongues and hands; when I feel more sorted I merely want us to accept that this 'inquest' is low drama, and not a court of law at all (and look shame faced about it). 

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Pass the popcorn!

It is one of the strange features of elections, particularly other peoples elections, that they bring out the 'entertainment side' of democracy well (at least to junkies like me) . We watch them as if they were sporting competitions or soap operas. We have our 'runners and riders' and have of favorites,  which we are attached to, for really no very good reason at all. We merely feel we ought to show preference. This is all good fun of course when the election is not your own (and so you can do nothing other than this), trouble comes when this runner and riders approach becomes the only way to think about democracy, we really ought to be about something other than passing the popcorn....

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Saints bones.

Is it just me - or has the current 'dash for thatcherism' (or its dismembered relics) become rather like on of those medieval struggles to collect the bones of a saint.
St Margret might be dead, but the political world is full of her agents (those who 'masterminded' this or that election or scheme), which can be adopted as a talisman, in some hope the glamour will wear off on them. Liberal get the mastermind of her 987 election campaign, the Labour part the saachi and saachi account, the Tories charles Saachi himself...
to those of us who remember those days, and the shere incompency, of the thatcher government (and the opposition which opposed it), all this is almost beyond parody. Or perhaps it is the stuff of the Decameron itself, where faith becomes enough to transform the vilest of sinners into a saint.
Which is a great story, and a fun way to run a religion, and yet starts to look a little threadbare when one considers how one should run a country...

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Here we go round again

It is surely one of the oldest rules in the game:When you want to drum up support for your policies hit the poor, no mater the injustice involved. The new 'policies' of those cary shary and quite frankly scary Tories are a classic case.

 Problem with such policies are fourfold Firstly,on the admin level they do not work (and are always more expensive in the end): Which is usually why they have never been tired.

Secondly such policies are caught up in the fact they very namely of their victims, that is the poorest and most embittered elements of society, are prepared ultimately to outflank any alleged policy. that is the bottom line is that no government can let them starve (and they are paid so little that starvation is always rather a near option.)

Thirdly, of the group of people contain the most unemployable elements in society. i tis pointless getting forcing them to do anything, as no one will want them. They are less unemployed, and more unemployable.

Finally the group are a very textures mass, full not of the 'lazy' and but also traumatizied (is varying ways), and so any policy is likely to create so much injustice that it is hardly worth the political consequence.

 

Moreover such policies fail because the numbers involved are very small beer (64000 long term unemployed @ 3000( or so) works out at 210 million pounds a year; when Mp's salaries come in at over 39 million a year, and the NHS spends billions.

Really hitting the poor is therefore at once costly, unjust, and not worth the savings, which is why beyond the idiotic postering of the scary shary tories and New Blither, it never is done. This is of course rather a pity, as it certainly is the case that within the miserable mass of poverty which haunts this country there are many sad stories, and many people awaiting so kid of root out. Trouble is as long as the policy is framed in the langugae of the Dail Hate, how to reach these problem remains not just impossible, but also unthinkable.

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Oh No - not a plague of diplomats

One suspects that diplomas are rather like locust or journalists, they turn up in hordes when least wanted. A mere plague of diplomats is of course rather unlikely to solve the 'middle east' problem, unless that is we are prepared actually change our policies (which was never apparently on the cards). I suspect that the most likely thing that this unknown horde is likely to achieve is the selling of more arms to more dodgy regimes, rather than peace. But then perhaps this is the point (well if there is any point beyond Milband thinking it was high time he had his face in the paper - which have been too full of Clegg and Cameron...)


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Just knock there heads together

It goes without saying I suppose that politics and reality Tv are echos of each other. Politics was no doubt the model from which reality TV sprang. That is, it is do doubt reality TV is the 'abstraction' of modern politics, where personal popularity, and worrying about the voters, has replaced (or been obliged to replace) any debate about serious issues. Initially perhaps this was fine and dandy. In a sense reality TV played here the role of the classic fool. It abstracted to the point of idiocy tendencies which where at first merely implicit within the democratic system. And yet problem is of course  the fool has very much taken over the palace, and politics  now appears to have become a (bad) reality TV show. 

Moreover politicians have added a new (and rather vapid) twist on the story. It is of course one of the  facets of reality TV that it clones itself. Big Bottom gave way to small Bottom or whatever.

Politics has run with this idea, but developed it in regard to contestants rather than shows. , Blair (the perfect non-real, reality politician) has given way to the clone of Blair (Cameron) and now the clone of the clone of blair (Clegg). Everyone wants a bit o the 'reality' action. Problem of course is that any like reality has been lost in the process.

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Bang slam...

I suppose it is the real millenium Bug we all appear to have caught - I mean the new year thing. Yet another chance to support the drink industry, and indulge in pure fantasy (which is not necessarily bad in itself). But what really has me reaching for the New-Scruge-Sick bucket is the virality game that large cities, and the media,  are clearly involved in, in their celebrations of the new year. Each large city clearly wants to claim is 'festivities' were the biggest and the best and hence tell everyone how much they cost, and how many watched - as if anyone who was not there was interested!  Which is not only boring for the rest of us, but risks plunging the entire new year thing into one of those festivals of excess, where status is accorded to those who waisted the most money (trouble with this is of course there are rather many ways of waisting money - and how can one tell how good 6 million pounds worth of fireworks should be?).

 But hey- I suppose daft rivalries such as this fill blank news days!...

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