tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38195491521790665482024-02-20T09:43:21.702+00:00Umbrella Blog 3Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02561483930556493363noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-32254951624024017202008-12-17T15:42:00.006+00:002008-12-17T17:04:30.916+00:00Hey, I was there. So what?When the film "Saving Private Ryan" came out I discussed the possibility of going to see it. In the end I decided that half an hour of Omaha Beach was more than I could take. "Huh," - came the grumpy reply. - "Then there are two and a half hours of Tom Hanks." Well, that settled it. I have not seen the film but I do recall one or two interesting comments about it.<br /><br />The more astute critics pointed out that the battle scenes at the beginning were not precisely "realistic" because no participant sees that much of a battle. In other words, if I should want tales told of what happened when people landed on Normandy beach and which houses they saw I would ask one of the participants (well, I should have done some time ago as not many of them are still around).<br /><br />If, on the other hand, I want to know more about Omaha Beach or other landings, I would turn to a participant if I can be certain that he has not let the "I was there" mantra stand in his way of finding out more about what happened, how and why. But then, somebody who was not there is as likely to have found all that out and much more likely to have made sense of it because his understanding would not be clouded by that mantra.<br /><br />There have been so many cases of people talking nonsense and trying to trump all arguments with those three words. Let me recall another incident. I went to a conference at which there were several talks about Northern Ireland. This was around the time of the Belfast Agreement. Many sessions were about the Agreement and what might come out of it.<br /><br />One talk was given by a chap who had been in the army in Northern Ireland, then went on to the security services, then became disenchanted with the whole endeavour and spent a good deal of time criticizing those services. (I cannot recall his name but the story will stand for several. People with long memories will remember those recanters.)<br /><br />This particular chap refused to acknowledge that there was any Soviet involvement in financing and arming the IRA or some section of it. First or all, he did not think the USSR was the "evil empire" and secondly he had not witnessed any arms from that source being supplied to the terrorists.<br /><br />When people in the audience pointed out that several consignments of arms from Czechoslovakia had been intercepted he became peevish. "I was there and I saw nothing of the kind."<br /><br />It is possible that we are talking about a particularly silly person here but I don't think so. There are three problems with the "I was there" meme.<br /><br />The first is the obvious fact that the people who "were there" did not see much more beyond their own immediate surroundings. If it was a battle, the famous fog of war would have prevented all participants at whatever level from knowing exactly what was going on. If wherever it was they were, was a country, a political system or a society that was not immediately familiar, the chances of understanding what it is they saw are near to zero.<br /><br />Not so long ago (but before the financial crisis hit us all but some of us more than others) I had a discussion with a very eminent economist, who shall remain nameless as one cannot tell who might be reading this blog. (Hey, one can dream.) We talked about China.<br /><br />His point was that China was powering ahead, everyone could achieve what they wanted and go where they wanted to, including abroad. He wasn't saying that many people in China can go abroad to study and to work but that pretty well anyone who wanted to could do so. And no, he did not think there were any serious internal tensions in the country. He had been there and he could see none. Nor was he told about anything like that though he was allowed to travel anywhere he wanted to and talk to anyone he met.<br /><br />I expressed some cautious scepticism, which was based on my reading of the news and some knowledge of the way Communist countries operate. For one thing, I doubted that he really could go anywhere he wanted since his trips had to be arranged by the authorities. For another, I wondered whether he really could have talked to anyone he wanted not being able to speak any form of Chinese. The people he talked to were either those very few who could speak English well enough to be able to express complex information or those chosen by his interpreter.<br /><br />Which brings me to the second problem with the "I was there" meme. Though there is no particular reason why people who were there should not use that experience as part of a process of acquiring knowledge (and many do), there is all too often a resistance to being told something or anything about the place where you have been.<br /><br />Once again, let me bring up another example, this time to prove that I am not completely arrogant and narrow-minded as some broad-minded and very liberal members of the forum have said. A few days ago I listened to a talk about recent developments in Indonesia. These are rather frightening and I shall blog about them very soon. After all, Indonesia must be one of the countries that the likes of Justin Webb are exhorting to "give America another chance". But I digress.<br /><br />This time I am not going to tell who the speaker was because the meeting was conducted strictly under Chatham House rule (which means I can use the material). Suffice it to say that we were listening to a man who had studied Islam and Islamism in South-East Asia (as well as some other countries), spoke several of the languages and had followed developments in Indonesia very closely. Oh and he had also just come back from the country.<br /><br />His talk, however, was about what he knew rather than what he had experienced when he "was there", so the interspersed tales of what happened to him and to people he knew were merely illustrations. "I was there" was not the main reason why people listened to him.<br /><br />The third problem with the meme is that those who go there and stay there often see what they want to see and, even more often see what others want them to see. Let us not forget the role of the media in the Vietnam debacle, still not fully acknowledged. That, of course, leads us to the perennial problem of understanding the role of the media and its peculiar agenda, topic for another posting.<br /><br />However, it is worth recalling yet again the descriptions people "who were there" gave of various Communist countries, starting with the Soviet Union, continuing with China, North Vietnam, Cuba and assorted others. The best known of those "who were there" was the Pulitzer Prize winner journalist, Walter Duranty. (S. J. Taylor wrote and excellent <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Apologist-Walter-Duranty-Timess/dp/0195057007">biography</a>, entitled "Stalin's Apologist".) He lied, probably quite deliberately for reasons of his own, about the Soviet Collectivization, the show trials and the purges.<br /><br />When challenged, he responded with those famous words: "I was there. I know." Several determined journalists' careers were destroyed by Mr Duranty who had been there and, therefore, "knew". His Pulitzer Prize still stands.<br /><br />He was not alone. Others lied deliberately for political and ideological reasons. Paul Robeson made it quite clear when he was in Moscow during the second big purge, in 1949, which was also gearing to be the second holocaust of the Jews on Soviet territory, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson#The_Soviet_Union.2C_Stalin.2C_and_communism">that he knew what was going on</a>. But he refused to speak about it on his return to the States. In fact, he denied that anything untoward was happening. He had been there and he "knew".<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Lattimore#World_War_II_and_after">Owen Lattimore</a>, an influential scholar went, together with US Vice-President and well-known Soviet sympathizer, Henry Wallace, on a trip organized by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauchlin_Currie#Allegations_of_Soviet_Intelligence_Activity">Lauchlin Currie</a>, one of the heads of the Foreign Economic Administration and Soviet spy, to China and Mongolia.<br /><br />Their stop-over in Siberia and inspection of the Kolyma concentration camp network has entered the myths of history, largely because of their description in National Geographic "as a combination of the Hudson's Bay Company and the TVA, remarking on how strong and well-fed the inmates were and ascribing to camp commandant Feliks Nikishov 'a trained and sensitive interest in art and music and also a deep sense of civic responsibility'".<br /><br />Subsequently, Professor Lattimore defended himself by explaining that he could not really snoop on his hosts and, anyway, the camps could not have been that bad as some people did survive. By then he had become a supporter of Mao in China and wrote extensively in justification of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Who could argue with him? He had been there.<br /><br />Was Professor Lattimore a knave or a fool? Which one was Vice-President Wallace? What of the numerous British and American journalists, politicians, important visitors, diplomats who wrote utter tosh about various Communist countries? Did they see what they wanted to see or were they simply content to let their hosts do the showing?<br /><br />It really did not matter. They had been there and, unlike those who had left or fled from those countries, they could go back and report again the same old rubbish. They had to be believed.<br /><br />Where do we go from here? Can one really not believe anybody who had been there? Obviously, that is nonsense, though I tend to ignore heavily financed, heavily guarded special war correspondents flown in by the BBC, CNN, what have you, to report back about a situation they encountered for the first time on landing at the airport.<br /><br />It seems reasonable that one must discard "I was there" as an argument. "This is what I saw and experienced" can be of interest as long as it does not transcend into some kind of an irrefutable argument. But "I know because" has to be followed by such words as "I have read", "I have studied the language" or "I understand the system/society/technology". Without any of that, the answer to "I was there" is inevitably "So what?".<br /><br /><a href="http://umbrellog.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7136" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-5775483169493844532008-08-05T12:36:00.003+01:002008-08-08T01:08:03.368+01:00Some people change the world (sort of)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD_FQaC6UKT0PjlhiQAO-TdCy1FQf58C5xlA-m3VRQK0AXYj8S3wl7LbhQVGA1HfYKOnjd8pHcDDWsZFPgE4nEI1iIUNOg8lSe3qWU2_CCTAwjXspoFgdcEMupYRUyl2y2K-JKSf-pn4g/s1600-h/Solzhenitsyn+01.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230997410472268834" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD_FQaC6UKT0PjlhiQAO-TdCy1FQf58C5xlA-m3VRQK0AXYj8S3wl7LbhQVGA1HfYKOnjd8pHcDDWsZFPgE4nEI1iIUNOg8lSe3qWU2_CCTAwjXspoFgdcEMupYRUyl2y2K-JKSf-pn4g/s320/Solzhenitsyn+01.JPG" border="0" /></a>Marxist theory says that individuals do not matter at all – history progresses through great shifts caused by internal contradictions connected with classes. Curiously enough, Marxism has produced more cults of personality than possibly any other political ideology. It actually started with Marx himself, who broke up the First International to prevent it from slipping into Mikhail Bakunin’s control.<br /><br />The followers of Ayn Rand, who proclaim themselves to be the exact opposite of Marxists though all too often they are the mirror image, believe in change and progress through a few brilliantly gifted individuals. One suspects that put into practice this ideology would, too, result in rather unpleasant consequences. But the basics of Randianism are considerably more accurate and attractive than those of Marxism.<br /><br />The point is that neither theory is correct. There are, of course, individuals who make a great difference to events but mostly changes are cumulative – small and more or less continuous.<br /><br />Occasionally, one can point to one individual who either made so much difference that his or her absence from historical events would have meant a complete change in direction (Lenin is an example that springs to mind) or managed to focus in himself or herself certain changes and ideas to the extent of being seen as a bearer of those.<br /><br />Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, whose death was announced yesterday, was a supreme example of the second. He was not the only person to write about the horrors of the Soviet system nor was he the first one to do so or the best writer in the field. But, somehow, he became the emblem of the fight against Communism and its supporters, some knowingly evil, some just stupid, in the West.<br /><br />Solzhenitsyn's first and, possibly, most important appearance was in the relatively liberal (by Soviet standards) journal <em>Novy Mir</em>, in 1962 when his novella “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” appeared. It had been heavily edited by Alexander Tvardovsky, himself a poet and an editor of genius, and has remained Solzhenitsyn’s best work of fiction. (Many years later when the latter had become a grand old man he insisted on publishing the original, rather unwieldy piece of prose. I have never come across anyone who has managed to read that.)<br /><br />It seems that Tvardovsky was sent two manuscripts, one by Solzhenitsyn about life in the camps and another by Lidiya Chukovskaya about the life outside the camps while the purge was raging. He sent both to Khrushchev for decision and Nikita Sergeyevich decided on “Ivan Denisovich”. Thus history is made. Chukovskaya’s novella, “Empty House” and her other works were published in the West and were not available in Russia till the nineties. She is, as it happens, a very good writer and a very courageous woman.<br /><br />The publication caused a sensation. For the first time in the Soviet Union a truthful account of life in the camps was published and could be discussed openly. There were a few other tales of this kind, then the curtain came down again.<br /><br />I remember reading the novella as a teenager and finding it impressive but not nearly as shattering as my parents and their friends found it. I had not lived through the whole period when everyone knew what was going on and nobody was allowed to mention it. Anyone who wonders why people from the Soviet Union are a little odd in their attitudes might like to contemplate what it feels like to lead that sort of existence.<br /><br />Solzhenitsyn, subsequently was forced into “internal exile”, a well-known Russian phenomenon and spent his time feverishly writing and, when necessary, hiding his work or getting friends to smuggle it out to the West, though he had a very ambivalent attitude to his work being published abroad. His view was that he survived imprisonment, camps of various kinds, and a bout of near fatal cancer that had been cured almost miraculously in Tashkent, in order to be a witness for the truth. (One wonders how he and Whittaker Chambers would have got on. Not very well, I suspect.)<br /><br />The best novels are those that are based directly on his experience, “First Circle” and “Cancer Ward”, though these, too, had to be edited quite seriously. The sad truth is that Solzhenitsyn was not a very good writer but what he had to say was vitally important to us all. His testimony for truth made him one of those on whom great historical changes depend.<br /><br />The ultimate example of this was “The Gulag Archipelago”, written in secret in the Soviet Union, buried in various places, away from prying eyes, and smuggled out to the West to be published in various languages in 1973, a year before the author’s own deportation from his homeland.<br /><br />The writing of “Gulag” between 1958 and 1968 is a phenomenal achievement, made even more so by the knowledge that if any of it had been found, if even one of Solzhenitsyn’s few friends (he could not afford too many) betrayed him, he would have found himself in another labour camp for many years or, possibly, in a psychiatric hospital where the torments were even more horrific. Still, he wrote it and hid it and allowed friends to take it out.<br /><br />In 1970 he received the Nobel Prize for literature but did not actually collect it till after his deportation. He did not want to leave the country for fear of not being allowed back and the Swedish government, rightly, refused to give it him at the embassy in Moscow.<br /><br />“Gulag Archipelago” is not the first book about the Soviet repressions, nor is it the best book, though the later, edited versions are extremely readable. Actually, the subject matter is such that even the original three-volume version is readable, despite the repetitions and unnecessary diversions. On the other hand, <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/02/by-their-friends-shall-you-know-them.html">Robert Conquest’s “The Great Terror”</a> came out in 1968 to much acclaim; there had been various memoirs, not least <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/08/book-everyone-must-read.html">“Under Two Dictators”</a> by Margarete Buber-Neumann.<br /><br />Conquest’s book did a great deal of damage to the <em>bien-pensant</em> left in the West with his careful collection of as much material as he could find; his completely matter of fact tone; and by the fact that it came out in the year when the Soviet tanks put an end to the notion of “Communism with a human face”. This was yet another example of enemies agreeing on the truth of political events and the large well-meaning crowd being left out in the cold. Knowledgeable and principled opponents of Communism recognized that it could not have a “human face” and predicted that the Soviet Union will have to intervene forcibly. The Soviet apparat agreed. It was the soggy, well-meaning, slightly leftish public opinion that was shocked.<br /><br />“Gulag Archipelago” and Solzhenitsyn’s life and personality caused even more of an outcry. The world seemed to divide into those who read and understood the book (or, at least, parts of it) and those who refused to have anything with it, maintaining hysterically that it was all an imperialist plot to discredit the socialist ideal. The point was that “Gulag Archipelago” abandoned any pretence that everything in the Soviet Union was fine until Stalin came to power. (Conquest did not pretend but his theme was more limited in scope.)<br /><br />The horrors of the Leninist system and of the short interregnum were detailed as far as Solzhenitsyn could gather material. The publication of the book was one of those events about which one can say with some certainty that the world would never be the same again. In the Soviet Union banned and samizdat copies circulated but the whole work was not published till 1989. So far as I know it is still in print.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnIm3l6EKvfnX3cCScO2SM1tHr7O2RV3W7mYng9giybHMEDciRR8RQHD4FKypiNlWcP5E2K9dncb9AgUS2-1P0Dev_sES1Ebli5JquhQeIo5cYGeqoSRS88uAEObmzuDij2kehtRweppQ/s1600-h/Solzhenitsyn+02.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230997415029877282" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnIm3l6EKvfnX3cCScO2SM1tHr7O2RV3W7mYng9giybHMEDciRR8RQHD4FKypiNlWcP5E2K9dncb9AgUS2-1P0Dev_sES1Ebli5JquhQeIo5cYGeqoSRS88uAEObmzuDij2kehtRweppQ/s320/Solzhenitsyn+02.JPG" border="0" /></a>Solzhenitsyn’s life in exile was less of an exemplar. His refusal to have anything to do with his neighbours in Vermont led to some resentment at first. Eventually, the neighbours shrugged their shoulders. If he preferred to stay at home and write, surrounded by extra security; if his contacts were the international great and the good rather than the good citizens of Vermont; so be it.<br /><br />For some people Solzhenitsyn continued to be the great oracle as he attacked the West for its weakness, venality, materialism and corruption as well as for not intervening more decisively in the Russian Civil War of 1918 – 1921. Others felt that this showed some ingratitude but, more importantly, a refusal to understand what democracy and liberalism were really about. In words that have become sadly familiar to us, Solzhenitsyn proclaimed that democracy was all wrong because mere humans cannot really debate and disagree on God’s order of things.<br /><br />Then there was the problem of his supposed anti-semitism. The subject is too convoluted for me to go into now. The row centred on his proclamation of trenchant Russian nationalism and his assertions that the Russian autocracy was not anti-semitic. Whether he was himself that way inclined remains the subject of ferocious arguments – his followers in Russia certainly were. The Russian nationalist dissidents of the last decade of the Soviet Union were not liberal or democratic in their outlook and despised the likes of Andrei Sakharov. Had <a href="http://brugesgroup.blogspot.com/2008/08/did-history-ever-go-away.html">Mr Kagan and his colleagues</a> spent some time talking to them before 1991, they might have been a little less optimistic in the subsequent years.<br /><br />What Solzhenitsyn did was to write feverishly. He produced various papers that ranged from his entirely admirable Nobel speech to his less than admirable late analyses of what was happening and what should happen in the Soviet Union and then in Russia. But mostly he was writing “The Red Wheel” cycle of novels about the Soviet tragedy as seen through the lives of a few people. Very few people, if any, have managed to get through the novels. He republished his early works in their unedited version and that was not a huge success either.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQzfbRQYvOxetquLOy0rTYT4OWWRzDpeoqy84890gJVDSADhqUVyE0gbDcIwvx65Sv-5KLciNOnX0LS-Z8fdd6DHCesokKIavTUztOOL24gLqJZiRGdgx3ADrGqcdmQgqjFeFoPw3oDtM/s1600-h/Solzhenitsyn_Putin.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5230997425345289634" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQzfbRQYvOxetquLOy0rTYT4OWWRzDpeoqy84890gJVDSADhqUVyE0gbDcIwvx65Sv-5KLciNOnX0LS-Z8fdd6DHCesokKIavTUztOOL24gLqJZiRGdgx3ADrGqcdmQgqjFeFoPw3oDtM/s320/Solzhenitsyn_Putin.JPG" border="0" /></a>In 1994 he went back to Russia to be greeted with official acclaim. Finally, his own homeland accepted him for his achievements in the fight against the powers of darkness. He was not happy because he did not like the way the country was going – as few did in the mid-nineties. Putin’s regime, on the other hand, <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/07/they-are-all-so-enigmatic.html">he accepted and even supported publicly as being a truer Russian model</a>. One wonders how he squared that entirely with Putin’s comments about the collapse of the Soviet Union being the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.<br /><br />It is a little hard to summarize a man of such calibre so soon after his death, which explains the raggedness of this piece. A towering figure of the fight against the Evil Empire, undoubtedly; much over-rated as a writer because of what he wrote rather than how he wrote it; and a questionable and controversial political thinker. There is no question, though, that he was one of those who changed the world (sort of).Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-2758627062597310922008-03-19T13:38:00.004+00:002008-03-19T13:53:28.989+00:00Letter to my MSP<div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.policecaruk.com/images/alexwatson3small.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px;" src="http://www.policecaruk.com/images/alexwatson3small.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Dear Mr Welsh,<br /><br />Can you please explain to me why Tayside Police have top of the range VW Passats with leather interior as patrol cars?<br /><br />I appreciate the Police do need fast response vehicles, after all pedestrians don't just mow themselves down but it doesn't take much effort to find vehicles in a similar performance bracket at a more realistic price.<br /><br />It does seem indicative of an attitude that money magically appears from above. I can provide them with payslips to demonstrate effectively that it does not.<br /><br />Were I a little wealthier I would perhaps not mind the Police having a few luxuries but when Dundee and Angus is an employment blackspot and I am more likely to bump into a unicorn than an NHS dentist I feel I am being cheated somehow.<br /><br />Rumour has it that Tayside Police, like any other government agency is in a rush to clear its budgets before April renewal and well over half a million is up for grabs internally. Are we to see Police offices kitted out with HD plasma screen TV's like the MOD?<br /><br />At a time when government spend is well north of 40% of GDP, on the brink of an economic catastrophe I'll wager the people of Angus need their money more than you (the government) does.<br /><br />I have not lived here long but I have already witnessed farcical internal waste with regard to software procurement in the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care, prompting an expensive mopping up operation.<br /><br />This in the same month Tayside NHS Service Improvement, a quango of sorts, books out the entire Apex hotel for a consultation session it will most likely ignore and Tayside NHS proudly announces it's so flush with resources it can cater for the peoples of Kenya too.<br /><br />Meanwhile, I'm considering booking a budget flight to Budapest to have a tooth filled because no dentist in Arbroath can take me.<br /><br />Can I have my money back?<br /><br />Yours sincerely,<br /><br />Peter North.<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></div>Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-62579703318483915092008-03-12T22:48:00.004+00:002008-03-12T23:10:59.516+00:00Bored to Death<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.boredatworkforum.com/bored_man.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 287px; height: 240px;" src="http://www.boredatworkforum.com/bored_man.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>The budget hasn't been a politically engaging event for some time now. We know we're going to get screwed. All that matters is how and how much. But even that isn't a concern at this stage. They've just about sussed that they've pushed their luck and shouldn't push it any further if they wish to keep the public disengaged from politics.<br /><br />The cynic in me was half expecting a raft of green taxes but they aren't that stupid. They know it's not washing with us. We even knew that expensive 4x4's would get a hit, but who among us buys them new anyway? Everybody was expecting fags 'n' booze to go up and no-one is the least bit concerned. We will adapt as we always have.<br /><br />In this respect successive governments remind me of first world war generals persisting in sending troops over the top in the certain knowledge they will be slaughtered in the first ten seconds. Just because it didn't work the first hundred times, doesn't deter them from doing it again and again.<br /><br />And of course we get no sign of action on the emerging economic crisis because announcing solutions means admitting there's a problem. Meanwhile the rest of the world is preparing for a long and frightening battle with the bailiffs.<br /><br />It seems they have learned much from their masters in Brussels. Keep it just boring enough to ensure no-one in their right mind pays any attention.<br /><br />In fact the only thing remarkable about the theatre production today was the sheer contempt Labour backbenchers showed for the proceedings. Nothing new there and I'm sure the public shares the sentiment but as the old man says... We are watching. Waiting and watching.Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-54809350167188551332007-12-09T16:06:00.000+00:002007-12-09T16:30:59.378+00:00The things done in the name of being green<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4BgBV8aZaL5sZ5uZX0MhTxYS-HIBPbz6Esh9rJcOIx7vqUlg-HNLnWnmxW8aibY5A4acbte-w6RI7L_8tBUPLZ9oxeglmRfPAFZK8NIOnH1eAp-dWWUxxZq2fY3ICRVbqiwBngdgNgU/s1600-h/Bali+conference+01.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142009991989010226" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji4BgBV8aZaL5sZ5uZX0MhTxYS-HIBPbz6Esh9rJcOIx7vqUlg-HNLnWnmxW8aibY5A4acbte-w6RI7L_8tBUPLZ9oxeglmRfPAFZK8NIOnH1eAp-dWWUxxZq2fY3ICRVbqiwBngdgNgU/s320/Bali+conference+01.JPG" border="0" /></a>The <em>Metro</em> newspaper, one of London’s freebies, has a <a href="http://www.metro.co.uk/climatewatch">special section on its website</a> on the subject of <strike>Green Hysteria</strike> Climate Watch, which, interestingly enough, never publishes a single article that does not fit the accepted we-are-about-to-die-by-drought-or-flooding-or-whatever because of the wicked Americans and their supporters who will not sign up to Kyoto.<br /><br />For instance we have seen little reference among all the hysterical hype about what might or might not happen in the next fifty years and how we must all go back to the Stone Age in order to preserve Mother Earth to <a href="http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/press/press284.html">the following</a>: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels decreased by 1.3 percent in 2006, from 5,955 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (MMTCO2) in 2005 to 5,877 MMTCO2 in 2006, according to preliminary estimates released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).<br /><br />The economy, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), grew by 3.3 percent and energy demand fell by 0.9 percent indicating that energy intensity (energy use per unit of GDP) fell by 4.2 percent. Carbon dioxide intensity (CO2 emission per unit of GDP) fell by 4.5 percent.</span></blockquote>This compares rather well with the non-reduction among all the Kyoto signatories.<br /><br />Nor do we hear a great deal about the ever higher carbon emissions from <a href="http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/154042.html">large developing countries</a> because it is not THEIR FAULT. Got that? Actually, we never hear about Russia’s carbon emissions and that country did sign the rapidly expiring Kyoto Treaty.<br /><br />The website does mention the “10,000 experts for Bali summit” but you have to read a long way down to see any mention of all the journalists as well and that the jamboree “is expected to create about 50,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases”. Never mind, somebody, somewhere is going to plant “4,500 hectares (11,000 acres) of trees … to offset the emissions from the talks”. I am sure those overworked and exploited peasants in Third World countries will be thrilled to bits.<br /><br />Actually, <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/11/four-legs-good-two-legs-better.html">they have the figures wrong</a>. The Sunday Times <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2936809.ece">has calculated</a> the event a little more precisely and came up with 15,000 people (though that includes journalists as well) and 100,000 tonnes of CO2.<br /><br />It would appear that the expected numbers were an understatement as more and more organizations deem it <a href="http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/316068/1/.html">necessary to send representatives</a> (or, perhaps, the entire organizations) to this <strike>beautiful island with its delightful climate</strike> incredibly important conference.<br /><br />That, rather conveniently, would fit with another part of the website, <a href="http://www.metro.co.uk/news/climatewatch/article.html?in_article_id=78219&in_page_id=59">Saints and Sinners</a> of the greenie pantheon. Friday’s saint was Kevin Rudd, who is sort of promising or threatening to reverse John Howard’s policy of having nothing to do with the Kyoto Treaty by saying that perhaps Australia will sign up to it.<br /><br />Sinners are just about everybody who does not go along with the demands of the UNDP (that would be the programme <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/claudiarosett/2007/11/29/a_un_watchdog_blog_thats_worth.php">that continues to pour money into North Korea</a> without bothering to find out what happens to it). It seems to me that given the realities of the Bali Conference, outlined, among others, by the <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/claudiarosett/2007/12/02/the_price_of_bali_baloney.php">estimable Claudia Rossett</a>, the Metro should put the entire conference and all its delegates, hangers-on, global bureaucrats, NGOs and media members among the Sinners.<br /><br />Sadly, it is not possible to find the most entertaining of Friday’s articles on the site. Perhaps, they will be there on Monday after all the copies of the <em>Metro </em>and other London freebies have been swept up to add to the enormous pile of rubbish taken out of London underground and London buses every evening.<br /><br />One of them, by John Higginson was entitled “Beams of fright warn of calamity”. It is all about the Eden Project in association with the Metro projecting frightful warnings on Tate Modern and Battersea Power Station to tell us that <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">It is estimated sea levels will increase by 10 cm (4 in) every ten years. Experts say this will affect us all and mean a 0.5 m rise by 2050. It is thought even a small increase will raise the risk of serious flooding along the Thames Estuary.</span></blockquote>Setting aside the question of who actually estimates, says and thinks all these things and on what evidence, one cannot help wondering how illuminating huge buildings quite unnecessarily and thus wasting a great deal of electricity would help the world.<br /><br />In any case, most people going by Tate Modern and seeing illumination on its huge walls will assume that it is yet another “work of art” that Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate Galleries is so fond of.<br /><br />Incidentally, Tate Modern has just been given £50 million by the government in an exceptional grant, to make it into the <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3226409.ece">“world’s best gallery of modern art”</a>. A lost cause, I fear, as anyone who has looked at its collection of twentieth century art can testify. Forget Tate Modern – lovely building, pathetic art – go to the Courtauld or the Estorick in Islington.<br /><br />The other article is about David Cameron speaking at Greenpeace and proposing various new ideas about saving the earth. His immediate proposal was to become energy efficient like Greenpeace’s London offices. Of course, we do not know whether that energy efficiency amounts to anything much more than what most householders try to achieve anyway, because they do not like paying huge bills.<br /><br />David Cameron said: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Imagine a country where each community is able to meet its own energy requirements instead of relying on a few huge power stations.</span></blockquote>Well, we did have a country like that once. It was in the Middle Ages and very few of us would like to go back to those living standards. My suspicion is that energy efficient or otherwise, Greenpeace gets its electricity from a huge power station.<br /><br />An interesting organization, Greenpeace. A lovely <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/">website</a>, in fact, several websites, as befits an international organization and each of them tells us that <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Greenpeace exists because this fragile Earth deserves a voice. It needs solutions. It needs change. It needs action.</span></blockquote>OK, stop laghing at the back there. Just how fragile is Earth? It’s been through some traumatic experiences and survived. And anyway, did that fragile Earth ask Greenpeace to be its voice? Was there an election or competitive submissions from different organizations? Not on your life.<br /><br />Actually, Greenpeace is not as mushy as all that. It is a tough organization with a good ability to publicize itself, often at the expense of other environmentalists. It is a wealthy outfit with many donations but they seem very reluctant to publish their accounts on the website. Any website.<br /><br />They insist that they take no money from governments or any corporate donors only from individuals. There must be an awful lot of very rich donors who are ready to part with their cash.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMtcHZ00nW3oH5gk8v5PQRPQ5lj-x5m1iJxIgb6UzZ3vMZ56x_rwqzQF6FFIZuPUzkGUkYAsvOKBt6beq9mT-fm3pgiKRgCd7VGvEfNCkc2l1lD0GaV4wUr_kX8HSiG9a1mCwO0cgLq3o/s1600-h/greenpeace.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142010322701492034" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMtcHZ00nW3oH5gk8v5PQRPQ5lj-x5m1iJxIgb6UzZ3vMZ56x_rwqzQF6FFIZuPUzkGUkYAsvOKBt6beq9mT-fm3pgiKRgCd7VGvEfNCkc2l1lD0GaV4wUr_kX8HSiG9a1mCwO0cgLq3o/s320/greenpeace.JPG" border="0" /></a>Actually, nothing is as straightforward as it seems. For instance, <a href="http://www.publicinterestwatch.org/">Public Interest</a>, an organization set up in the United States in 2002, to watch the non-profit organizations and how they deal with the money given to them, has shown itself to be a little dissatisfied.<br /><br />Back in 2003 it filed <a href="http://www.publicinterestwatch.org/press_9_12_03.htm">a complaint</a> with the <a href="http://www.publicinterestwatch.org/greenpeace_letter.htm">IRS</a>, pointing to a report in which it accused Greenpeace of using money donated to it under tax exemption rules for activity that definitely cannot be exempt. <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Examples of taxpayer subsidized activities undertaken by Greenpeace include:<br /><br />Blockading a naval base in protest of the Iraq war,<br />Boarding an oil tanker for a banner hanging,<br />Breaking into the central control building of a nuclear power station,<br />Padlocking the gates of a government research facility.<br /><br />Because Greenpeace receives significant donations from large entities such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Turner Foundation, the report also calls into question the accountability of these donors.<br /><br />"Foundations that make tax-exempt contributions are responsible for verifying that their funds are used appropriately," Hardiman said. "In the case of contributions to Greenpeace, either the foundations have no idea how their money is being spent, or they are knowingly allowing their funds to be laundered for illegal advocacy and civil disobedience."</span></blockquote>Apart from anything else one must point out that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Turner Foundation are not individual donors. They are, in fact, corporate donors.<br /><br />Here is <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/murdock/murdock200310070839.asp">a list</a> of all those “individual” donors: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Despite its groovy, incense-fueled image, Greenpeace relies on multi-billion-dollar foundations to pay its bills. Many of these, ironically, were launched by spectacularly wealthy capitalists, the very bogeymen against whom Greenpeace ceaselessly rails. Among Greenpeace Fund, Inc.'s underwriters, PIW identifies the following:<br /><br />John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation<br />The John Merck Fund<br />Charles Stewart Mott Foundation<br />The David and Lucile Packard Foundation<br />Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc.<br />Turner Foundation, Inc.</span></blockquote>In 1999 <a href="http://www.iea.org.uk/record.jsp?ID=375&type=book">Canada revoked</a> Greenpeace’s tax-exempt status, arguing that it was inappropriate.<br /><br />All of this may or may not be important. All we are asking is that Greenpeace should make its accounts available on the website, so we can all judge where the money is coming from.<br /><br />Anyhow, David Cameron <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/here-come-the-tories-to-launch-their-green-energy-policy-20071206">trotted off to Greenpeace in London</a> to propose his party’s <a href="http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=141055">energy policies</a>: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Decentralised energy provides a clear example of how this virtuous circle can work.<br /><br />By enabling people to generate their own electricity, we are literally giving them more power over their own lives.<br /><br />This really is power to the people.<br /><br />Once people start generating their own electricity, they will become far more conscious of the way in which they use it - they will become more responsible about energy use and their own environmental impact.<br /><br />And the overall effect of these changes will be to make Britain greener - to help reduce our carbon emissions and thereby contribute to a safer country and a safer world.</span></blockquote>Well, all right, politicians have to come up with stuff like that, and it goes on for pages, but anything concrete there? <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">From controversies over low cost airlines, to the endless green lifestyle newspaper supplements, the emphasis can often feel like an accusatory: "what are you going to do about it?"<br /><br />And solutions are often perceived to involve higher costs, more tax or some form of personal sacrifice.<br /><br />While of course it's important that everyone feels empowered to be part of the solution to climate change, I think we need to shift the burden of emphasis from "what are you going to do about it" to "what are we going to do about it?"<br /><br />We are all in this together and we need to challenge the idea that fighting climate change is nothing more than a burden on consumers.<br /><br />We need to shift the public debate away from a simplistic focus on the individual and towards a vision of dynamic industrial change, challenging the whole hydro-carbon dependency of our economy.<br /><br />We need an emphasis on research, innovation, new markets and entrepreneurial solutions. We need to champion the potential of UK plc to compete aggressively in the new low carbon economy.</span></blockquote>At least he has recognized that people are not impressed by the greenies who talk the talk but rarely walk the walk, preferring some high-powered car to ride in or a private jet to fly in. Furthermore, shifting the debate away from individuals and the taxes they might have to pay, this is another way of trying to prevent the hoi polloi from pointing to the hypocrisy of the greenie establishment. (See Bali conference above)<br /><br />We should also welcome his emphasis on research and development rather though it is not entirely clear whether he knows what the words mean since quoting the Stern Report is not precisely the most scientific way forward.<br /><br />His central idea is energy being produced by local small providers, presumably through various alternative methods. Sounds about as useful as that Chinese idea of the fifties of having a miniature steel foundry in every backyard.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgVrJjC4qvGrNUjHuDEdwv5kA4VikjTL6gzUSZj6WQV5wZHU4dKl9IHR8I4hvNiReLId1qXMYCHLktQTDlvK2E4zneNhohfMrmTrlUaHefy5OnZ45VmecaNpWjjK8tFA2ijY7lapLaeYU/s1600-h/Camreron+01.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5142010627644170066" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgVrJjC4qvGrNUjHuDEdwv5kA4VikjTL6gzUSZj6WQV5wZHU4dKl9IHR8I4hvNiReLId1qXMYCHLktQTDlvK2E4zneNhohfMrmTrlUaHefy5OnZ45VmecaNpWjjK8tFA2ijY7lapLaeYU/s320/Camreron+01.jpg" border="0" /></a>On a more practical level he has suggested that <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">stores such as Tesco and Asda should make their premises energy efficient and generate excess power which could be sold back to the grid. Under Conservative climate change proposals, there would also be moves to make it easier for home owners to install equipment such as solar panels and wind turbines.</span></blockquote>The greatest difficulty there is expense. It is not quite clear whether Mr Cameron is suggesting subsidies or targeted cuts in local taxes. Surely, not the latter. After all, he would not want to overrule local councils.<br /><br />Let’s face it, if Mr Cameron really wanted to make Britain self-sufficient in energy, he would talk about nuclear power stations. Like the old-fashioned greenie that he is, the goes up in smoke (so to speak) as soon as the “n” word is mentioned.<br /><br />Another one of Mr Cameron’s proposals has caused some perplexity in One London’s offices. The Metro reported it in the following words: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">All homes should have meters which measure how much electricity they are using, he said. Similar systems worked well in countries such as Germany and Holland, the Tory leader added.</span></blockquote>What on earth does he mean? Every home has a meter already. If there is gas and electricity, there are two meters. Does he not know? Who deals with such matters in his household?<br /><br />My attempts to con the speech came up with this possible explanation of what that paragraph is about: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">In the Netherlands, for instance, in little more than a decade, combined heat and power (CHP) became the single largest supplier of the country's energy needs.I want to see a similar revolution happen in Britain.<br /><br />I do not take a view of which energy sources should be used - I simply want to see them operate on a level playing field.<br /><br />I want Britain to adopt micro-generation: small providers, including homes and businesses, producing energy for their own use, using a variety of methods from combined heat and power, to wind to solar photovoltaic power.<br /><br />The policy paper we're publishing today sets out how it can done.<br /><br />A new system of 'feed-in tariffs', by which people are paid for the energy they produce, will stimulate diversity and decentralisation of our power supply, as well as incentivise energy-saving.<br /><br />In Germany, a feed-in tariff system has seen a far faster growth in renewable energy and the creation of over 250,000 jobs in the wind energy sector alone.<br /><br />There is absolutely no reason why that can't happen here.</span></blockquote>I am not sure the creation of heavily subsidized jobs in the wind energy sector is necessarily the solution to whatever energy problems we face at the moment. Furthermore, I need to hear a great deal more about those micro-generators before I disconnect my present gas and electricity supplies. Among other matters I want to know more about what trials have been made, where, on what scale and what the results were, beyond those 250,000 jobs.<br /><br />Generators might make sense for those sky-scrapers in New York, though not many of them have gone down that way, as Mr Cameron would know if he actually read what happened during that famous black-out. But individual households making their own energy?<br /><br />Eventually, I found that reference to the meters: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Consumers will be able to monitor how much electricity they are using by installing smart meters that make information readily accessible.</span></blockquote>This is not precisely what the <em>Metro</em> implied but it is still muddled. Smart meters are not quite what Mr Cameron thinks they are.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter">Wikipedia</a> defines them: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">A Smart meter generally refers to a type of advanced meter (usually an </span><a title="Electrical meter" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_meter"><span style="font-size:85%;">electrical meter</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">) that identifies consumption in more detail than a conventional meter; and optionally, but generally, communicates that information via some </span><a title="Computer networking" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_networking"><span style="font-size:85%;">network</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> back to the local </span><a title="Public utility" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_utility"><span style="font-size:85%;">utility</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> for monitoring and billing purposes (</span><a title="Telemetering" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemetering"><span style="font-size:85%;">telemetering</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">).</span></blockquote>This <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jul/13/energy.business">article</a> in the Guardian goes into greater detail: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The government and energy supply industry yesterday began a £20m trial to encourage households to curb their use of gas and electricity and reduce Britain's emissions of greenhouse gases.<br /><br />Some 15,000 homes will be equipped with so-called smart meters, allowing consumers and suppliers to track energy use, cutting out the need for meter readings and estimated bills. Another 8,000 homes will be given stand-alone display units, which show consumers how much electricity they are using and what it is costing but which do not pass on information to the energy supplier. Another 17,000 will get advice on how to economise.</span></blockquote>In other words, the savings will come largely from this being a more efficient (possibly) way of reading electricity meters. Gas seems not to be involved. This is not the same as saving electricity or the planet though it would probably cut energy bills.<br /><br />As for people being able to see how the electricity is used and where they might be able to cut down, this could be rather a problem. In the first place, the people who are likely to act in that way beyond the first exciting week of novelty are the people who spend some time thinking these matters through now. Those who do not, probably will not.<br /><br />The other problem is that it may not be such a good idea to tell people how little electricity goes on certain aspects of their lives. The recent fuss about computer monitors and computers being left on sleep mode will become impossible in the future once everybody can check how insignificant the amounts of electricity used by computers or monitors on sleep mode.<br /><br />Beware of giving people too much power.Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-90435838077846493472007-12-05T13:37:00.000+00:002007-12-05T13:44:33.370+00:00Fry the bastard!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWs78BSdHB02Io4xymVKGcIlskIv5OkpDVdMdded20iQ8d8Wdh9PqFmN31J8viQFyJVr9xJND3ZtzGdB6-7P_7WGU42UhTI_2F27HcfeJUVU1xQPK-U2JYpEGPrEMfc3D8-9t5Hh_ACajx/s1600-h/police205.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWs78BSdHB02Io4xymVKGcIlskIv5OkpDVdMdded20iQ8d8Wdh9PqFmN31J8viQFyJVr9xJND3ZtzGdB6-7P_7WGU42UhTI_2F27HcfeJUVU1xQPK-U2JYpEGPrEMfc3D8-9t5Hh_ACajx/s320/police205.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5140483461998038322" /></a>I could not resist commenting on the banning of Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Police, Merydydd Hughes. He had been caught speeding in north Wales in May of this year, clocked at 90mph on the A5, near Wrexham, which has a 60mph limit.<br /><br />Mr Hughes, famously, has previously worked as the Chairman of Roads Policing at the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), and has argued that "less conspicuous" speed cameras would work to prevent speeding and bring down accident rates. <br /><br />That is the nature of our modern public servants – hypocrisy on legs, but there is a particularly personal issue here. Mr Hughes's officers are known to infest the section of the M1 on their patch, specifically targeting "speeding" drivers. <br /><br />It was there, in good weather on an otherwise empty motorway at just gone midnight, that I got picked up by a particularly officious member of his force, for doing 82 mph – an offence that got me a six month ban under the totting-up procedure.<br /><br />Unlike Mr Hughes, of course, I did not have a chauffeur-driven car so a ban was a real hardship – to say nothing of the fine - so forgive me if I wish Mr Hughes all the worst, and wish he'd got six years and been fired into the bargain.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5503" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02561483930556493363noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-13594115331726756112007-11-29T18:54:00.000+00:002012-12-01T01:14:48.115+00:00Unnoted connections<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRHpuqahhRzacdmQLR40pnD8Sb9W9zzWaIuAKfY4X71x7oeIWXVjCRHT6XytBBXVRi-uxKSs9fEDLaOda54l0yV1Gk5R1NYLnuD0IBybDqVMic6q8Dp5HP-jn6Zy-5SO2lbY22ATBxSI/s1600-h/Oxford+Union.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138344339869666738" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihRHpuqahhRzacdmQLR40pnD8Sb9W9zzWaIuAKfY4X71x7oeIWXVjCRHT6XytBBXVRi-uxKSs9fEDLaOda54l0yV1Gk5R1NYLnuD0IBybDqVMic6q8Dp5HP-jn6Zy-5SO2lbY22ATBxSI/s320/Oxford+Union.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>One’s first reaction to the recent tale of the Oxford Union meeting, their invited guests, David Irving and Nick Griffin plus the inevitable uproar was a weary shrug of shoulders – another clever-dick story. As time went on, the story took on a more interesting character, especially if one links it to a couple of other reports, not much noted by the British MSM.<br />
<br />
Let’s get the Oxford Union events out of the way first. Over on the EUReferendum blog we have written on a number of occasions that freedom of speech (not incitement of violence but the expression of political opinions, however unpleasant) is of the greatest importance. Let me link to <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/04/so-errm-freedom-of-speech-is-accepted.html">this posting</a>, <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/03/freedom-has-curious-champions.html">this</a> and <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/02/freedom-of-speech-1.html">this</a>, just for starters.<br />
<br />
Two points can be made immediately about the brouhaha, apart from the curious irony of people demanding a ban on people who have been invited to speak in a debate on freedom of speech. None of the arguments – giving a platform to fascists or just generally unpleasant people, these issues have already been settled, cannot allow the pollution of the Oxford Union – hold water even for one second.<br />
<br />
The two points were to do with the University and with Thames Valley police. If the University of Oxford cannot produce people, either insiders or outsiders, who can tear Nick Griffin’s and David Irving’s arguments to pieces then there is a problem in that august institution that should be addressed.<br />
<br />
Though the police seem reasonably pleased with themselves, they <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/27/noxford227.xml">do not seem to have done</a> what they are supposed to do, which is allow people go about their lawful business. Protestors broke into the Union building, other people did not manage to get in and the debate had to be conducted in two separate rooms. Were the police told not to be too hard on those well-meaning youngsters who screamed abuse at anyone who wanted to hear what the terrible BNP had to say?<br />
<br />
In the end, of course, it is the BNP that emerged triumphant from this skirmish, as they have done from all previous ones. They can claim attempted victimization, lack of coherent argument against them and as Nick Griffin put it: <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 85%;">This is a mob which would kill. I have seen them beat old men and women and try to kill them. Had they grown up in Nazi Germany they would have made splendid Nazis.</span></blockquote>
He is probably right about that last comment and even if he is not, this is possibly not what the demonstrators wanted to hear. Furthermore, I can imagine large numbers of youngsters being inspired by the heroic fight the BNP is putting up in the cause of right and freedom and joining that benighted organization.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, out in the big bad world (where British political donor scandals are not considered to be terribly important or even interesting) there have been two anniversaries, both a little artificial, as I shall explain, but both of huge importance with a connection to the Oxford fracas.<br />
<br />
The first took place in Russia where President Putin was <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/30/europe/putin.php">among those who marked</a> the 70th anniversary of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union. October 30 was designated Political Prisoners’ Day in 1974 in the Soviet Union (by the prisoners and their friends not the authorities). In 1991 it became officially Day of Victims of Political Repression.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdJf_NnSJ97SwyWh-196P2fyjB73R3CV4m9WeiUyxNEessJ3Ve3C1_aYg-6qb5JxM1LYvHBBAqUlfJkpIeWyr2zd4_mREgTMFV4wnwsIcvsF5Xf4TXMYyh5Fe36p9y8sWcW3uNni6NFs/s1600-h/Stalin_Yezhov.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138346169525734850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYdJf_NnSJ97SwyWh-196P2fyjB73R3CV4m9WeiUyxNEessJ3Ve3C1_aYg-6qb5JxM1LYvHBBAqUlfJkpIeWyr2zd4_mREgTMFV4wnwsIcvsF5Xf4TXMYyh5Fe36p9y8sWcW3uNni6NFs/s320/Stalin_Yezhov.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a>There were many such days in the Soviet Union, especially under Lenin and Stalin but one day had to be designated and why not this one.<br />
<br />
Why the 70th anniversary? That has something to do with the way Russians and, indeed, others from the former Soviet Union talk about that period. When Nikita Khrushchev <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/02/fifty-year-old-speech.html">first spoke</a> about the repressions publicly, he concentrated on the attack levelled at the Communist Party, which was at its height in 1937, the year in which the purges began in real earnest.<br />
<br />
So, although the arrests started almost immediately after the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934 and although 1938 with the great trial of Right-Wing Deviationist Trotskyites a.k.a. Nikolai Bukharin and others saw far more arrests it is <em>tridsat’ sed’moy god</em> (1937) that serves as a short-hand for the Great Terror of the thirties.<br />
<br />
It now makes sense that the victims of that and other Soviet terror were being commemorated on October 30, 2007 (by a strange coincidence the 70th anniversary of the night my grandfather was arrested in Moscow to disappear for ever).<br />
<br />
Putin’s participation in the memorial service held near the Butovsky Poligon was full of piquant ironies. Nothing wrong with the place: <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 85%;">The site of the commemorations Tuesday, Butovsky Poligon, is on the grounds of a pre-revolutionary estate on the edge of Moscow. It was a secret prison run by the NKVD, the KGB's predecessor, and is the burial place of more than 20,000 people who were killed during the height of Stalin's purges in 1937 and 1938. In that period, hundreds were sometimes shot there in a single day. Poligon translates as "shooting range."</span></blockquote>
Recently it has become a Russian Orthodox shrine after it was determined that about 1,000 of those people were killed for their (Orthodox) faith. Nothing wrong with that either.<br />
<br />
But what are we to make of commemorations attended by a former and unrepentant KGB/FSB agent who has managed to introduce a miniscule version of Soviet oppression in Russia now? So far, completely miniscule, I am glad to say but the signs are not good.<br />
<br />
There was another problem. The service was conducted by the Patriarch Aleksy II, whose links with the KGB/FSB are very well known throughout Russia.<br />
<br />
There was another commemoration in Moscow and many others, I expect, in other places. <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 85%;">Survivors of the gulag, the Soviet system of prison camps, gathered Tuesday at Lubyanka Square, near the former KGB headquarters, in front of a monument called the Solovetsky Stone, which was brought from one of the first Soviet prison camps.<br /><br />Rights activists and opposition politicians later gathered to call attention to those they regard as modern Russian political prisoners, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed oil magnate who challenged the Kremlin, and Mikhail Trepashkin, a former KGB agent who was jailed for disclosing state secrets after working with liberal legislators who suspected the secret police of involvement in a series of apartment bombings in Moscow and southern Russia that set off the second Chechen war in 1999 and helped bring Putin to power.</span></blockquote>
The Solovetsky camps were set up under Lenin and very unpleasant they were, too.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNlr51PfLA-XW5daNmYT4E14e_YTnMsqg4mWN0BzxbqzjCfov5_FHcrDb2Z_DC33nKpF1PiS9HRWVuyQEaPgE_YG2aMZNw52jidWyLllvrOl9hnUaa-aj2IG6Zggj_iCjxDLzGxq5P1Fc/s1600-h/Ukraine-famine-holodomor+02.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138342535983402386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNlr51PfLA-XW5daNmYT4E14e_YTnMsqg4mWN0BzxbqzjCfov5_FHcrDb2Z_DC33nKpF1PiS9HRWVuyQEaPgE_YG2aMZNw52jidWyLllvrOl9hnUaa-aj2IG6Zggj_iCjxDLzGxq5P1Fc/s320/Ukraine-famine-holodomor+02.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a>The third event that went almost completely unnoticed in Britain is the <a href="http://en.for-ua.com/news/2007/11/26/101926.html">75th anniversary</a> of what the Ukrainians call the Holodomor, the politically engineered famine as a punishment for the Ukrainian recalcitrance over Collectivization and in order to break the Ukrainian national spirit.<br />
<br />
There is a theory that the Great Terror of the mid to late thirties was unleashed by Stalin to some extent in order to cover up the horrific genocide of the Collectivization. Numbers of its victims vary from 13 to 17 million. Well, let’s split the difference and say 15 million, which is possibly the most accurate figure (I am ready to be corrected on that by anyone who has seen more recent estimates).<br />
<br />
Collectivization of agricultural land is the cornerstone of Communist power and was carried out everywhere the Communists, those lovable well-meaning characters came to power. The Great Leap Forward in China claimed at least 30 million victims.<br />
<br />
There were commensurate numbers of dead in Vietnam, Cambodia and Ethiopia under Colonel Mengistu. In none of these countries, not even the former Soviet ones, where these events happened a long time ago, has agriculture recovered. It is so easy to destroy; so difficult to rebuild.<br />
<br />
The process of Collectivization in the Soviet Union, both in its early stages when “kulaks”, that is peasants who had been successful through hard work, were exterminated and through the subsequent confiscation of all, and I mean all grain in a deliberate policy of murdering as many people as possible through famine, spread across all the republics.<br />
<br />
It was particularly vicious in the Ukraine for two reasons. The peasantry made up a larger proportion of the population and the land being very fertile they had become better producers; and Stalin with his henchmen was determined to destroy Ukrainian national identity. For that reason the subsequent purge was also extremely ferocious.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLBb6cOimXYHMYiUtqgFKZFu1jF5-9WC8kpQbSZubo9yBWKxcalCmE8X6F7aUMk4OR_5W3Zh2SjHxYpCBBF8XscCTMTZtqwi00x0iYYYcekaj5MHao4eSIa34__KBnGPzk0CTxYoOmLk/s1600-h/Ukraine-famine-holodomor+01.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138342394249481602" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLBb6cOimXYHMYiUtqgFKZFu1jF5-9WC8kpQbSZubo9yBWKxcalCmE8X6F7aUMk4OR_5W3Zh2SjHxYpCBBF8XscCTMTZtqwi00x0iYYYcekaj5MHao4eSIa34__KBnGPzk0CTxYoOmLk/s320/Ukraine-famine-holodomor+01.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>President Yushschenko had an article in the <em>Wall Street Journal Europe </em>last Monday when the commemorations were being held. Sadly, the piece is available only to subscribers on the net but I shall quote one or two paragraphs from it.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgKTUXybwzL96xUOGyyZgXpeCGuwgF6D3vmiuTnYMjsWKcjSQm1-1AdnPHz-ulL-NhR2gWMZDpjmBFoFlvENXeJ2N9268pr2Zskjjxop_IQkHnu4ZCa6yqGLxDeZ0ZVYQMMPXllht03Qo/s1600-h/harvest_of_sorrow+01.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138342179501116786" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgKTUXybwzL96xUOGyyZgXpeCGuwgF6D3vmiuTnYMjsWKcjSQm1-1AdnPHz-ulL-NhR2gWMZDpjmBFoFlvENXeJ2N9268pr2Zskjjxop_IQkHnu4ZCa6yqGLxDeZ0ZVYQMMPXllht03Qo/s320/harvest_of_sorrow+01.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a>What the Ukrainians would like is to designate the Holodomor as genocide, a tiresome idea in my opinion. What they also want with some justification is an acknowledgement of what they had suffered, a story that has not been told all that often though Robert Conquest wrote a very good and extremely harrowing book about Collectivization<a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/RussiaFormerSovietUnion/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTA1MTgwMw==">, “The Harvest of Sorrow”</a>.<br />
<br />
Yushschenko emphasizes that acknowledgement of the Holodomor does not mean he wants some nationalist apportioning of blame. <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 85%;">We are not doing so out of a desire for revenge or to make a partisan political point. We know that the Russian people were among Stalin’s foremost victims. Apportioning blame to their living descendants is the last thing on our minds. Our only wish is for this crime to be understood for what it truly was.</span></blockquote>
So what was it? <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 85%;">There is now a wealth of historical material detailing the specific features of Stalin’s forced collectivization and terror famine policies against Ukraine. Other parts of the Soviet Union suffered terribly as well. But in the minds of the Soviet leadership there was a dual purpose in persecuting and starving the Ukrainian peasantry. It was part of a campaign to cursh Ukraine’s national identity and its desire for self-determination.<br /><br />As Stalin put it a few years earlier: “There is no powerful national movement without the peasant army …. in essence, the national question is a peasant question”. In seeking to reverse the policy of “Ukrainization” that promoted limited cultural and political autonomy during the 1920s, Stalin decided to target the peasantry, representing as it did 80% of the population. His solution to the national question in Ukraine was mass murder through starvation.<br /><br />Stalin’s cruel methods included the allocation of astronomic grain requisition quotas<br />that were impossible to meet and which left nothing for the local population to<br />eat. When the quotas were missed, armed units were sent in. Toward the end of<br />1932, entire villages and regions were turned into a system of isolated starvation ghettos called “black boards”.<br /><br />Throughout this period, the Soviet Union continued to export grain to the West and even used grain to produce alcohol. By early 1933, the Soviet leadership decided to radically reinforce the blockade of Ukrainian villages. Eventually, the whole territory of Ukraine was surrounded by armed forces, turning the entire country into a vast death camp.</span></blockquote>
Not many people got through and those that did like Walter Duranty wrote Soviet propaganda, furiously persecuting any writer or journalist who told otherwise, using those famous words: “I was there. I know.” To this day Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize stays attached to his name.<br />
<br />
One man who did write the truth was Malcolm Muggeridge who tried to get some stories out into the <em>Manchester Guardian</em>, who refused to publish anything so bad about the Soviet Union. He collected them in his <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n3_40/ai_6355393">“Winter in Moscow”</a>.<br />
<br />
Yushschenko writes about subsequent purges aimed at a destruction of Ukrainian cultural life as its economic life had been destroyed. To be fair, much of this was going on in the rest of the Soviet Union as well. <br />
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: 85%;">Waves of purges engulfed academic institutions, literary journals, publishing houses and theatres. Victims included the Ukrainian Academy of Science, the editorial board of the Soviet Ukrainian Encyclopaedia, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and ultimately the Ukrainian Communist Party.</span></blockquote>
One can substitute the words Russian or Georgian for Ukrainian and it would be true, none of which diminishes the historic trauma of the Ukrainian people.<br />
<br />
So what have these two stories to do with that idiotic performance in Oxford apart from the fact that so much space was taken up by journalistic accounts of undergraduate silliness that the two anniversaries were barely mentioned in Britain? In fact, I have not been able to find a single reference to Holodomor in any British media outlet.<br />
<br />
There is more to it all, though. The tales of which I told a very small part above, have been denied, diminished and ignored by most of the Western and, specifically, British academia and writing community.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAPZpn4fPcvB9VbVrJaOb7Ijo2cG3JVClVv6AQCB-r_WmU4hUT4R_oQ-91YRk-iZxLd-OjIKyPLFEKFVaCTEaGd-hu3QOGj8K86KLqKiwV10uVSF0RAYkGChYNBrzEerjHyXn53929d0Y/s1600-h/Hobsbawm.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138343811588689314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAPZpn4fPcvB9VbVrJaOb7Ijo2cG3JVClVv6AQCB-r_WmU4hUT4R_oQ-91YRk-iZxLd-OjIKyPLFEKFVaCTEaGd-hu3QOGj8K86KLqKiwV10uVSF0RAYkGChYNBrzEerjHyXn53929d0Y/s320/Hobsbawm.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>Have the students ever demonstrated when deniers of Communist holocausts or genocides were invited to speak at the Union? No, of course not. After all, Communists are well-meaning people even though these horrific crimes followed the establishment of any Communist government as surely as night follows day.<br />
<br />
Has anyone ever suggested that Professor Eric Hobsbawm, the man <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/02/freedom-of-speech-1.html">who still finds it difficult to tell the truth about Collectivization</a>, should not be given a platform? Not that I know of. Does anyone suggest that Richard Gott who admitted being a paid agent of influence as recently as twenty years ago should be prevented from writing tosh in various publications? Hmmm, not recently.<br />
<br />
I have once <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/01/genocide-one-or-genocide-two.html">suggested</a> that we should make Famine Denial a criminal offence and put some of those who have either denied Holodomor or trivialized it on trial. Of course, I do not really mean that any more than President Yushchenko does (I think). But could we possibly have a little logic in our hysterical outbursts?<br />
<br />
How can we expect full lustration in former Communist countries when we refuse to face up to our barefaced lies and denials?Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-36527955526638851052007-11-13T21:06:00.000+00:002007-11-13T23:34:40.980+00:00Who guards the guardians?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivDj16V9KXhRDCQ4Go4sO8PyXRz0ao7xzy8OD3U5-csV50HlN2Zu-4uYwCAYG-cdSDXKwUkaIqdc4Mjlkj-bqEsSn-A3KwDg7oxnG5CKbDgu0P6z4tW3sKyw26Q9fvr83UBhe8tAvZ0zw/s1600-h/mohammed_al_dura.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132438646789279906" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivDj16V9KXhRDCQ4Go4sO8PyXRz0ao7xzy8OD3U5-csV50HlN2Zu-4uYwCAYG-cdSDXKwUkaIqdc4Mjlkj-bqEsSn-A3KwDg7oxnG5CKbDgu0P6z4tW3sKyw26Q9fvr83UBhe8tAvZ0zw/s320/mohammed_al_dura.jpg" border="0" /></a>Yes, indeed, dear readers, this is another piece about the MSM and its less than glorious record in some parts of the world. We have followed the crucial Mohammed al-Dura story, with the <a href="http://umbrellog3.blogspot.com/2007/10/do-they-know-they-are-lying.html">latest posting</a> in October.<br /><br />Tomorrow is the day on which France2 will supposedly show the unedited rushes of the episode to the court and, presumably, all other interested parties. Unless there is a fire in the warehouse, of course. Awfully flammable, film is and so are those new-fangled disks.<br /><br />In the meantime, Richard Landes, the man who must have done more than anybody else to unravel the tale has <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/11/mideast_journalisms_public_sec.php">another long piece</a> on the subject.<br /><br />His theme is one he has repeated several times before but we, on this blog, do not entirely agree with him.<br /><br />Freedom of the press, Mr Landes rightly points out, does not exist in vacuum. There have to be certain assumptions around it. We are not talking that canard, produced by politicians or other self-important people who do not like criticism that a free press must mean a responsible press; what is meant here is that there must be no "creation of evidence" and the press or media must avoid being duped by created evidence.<br /><br />Naturally, we agree with that sentiment. We have followed various stories to do with that dual necessity that, regrettably, the MSM does not always live up to, not least with my colleague uncovering together with the odd helper here and there, <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/corruption-of-media.html">the story of Qana</a>.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBSrBsfvCvuyL0pT-eOPJpcjvN3LVoUAN9phTd8iXnZPorMgOYfR7E1Mfkh_ntxlYZyPfNer1aV_wQvlplaRy7SID31-Z5HV18d8WuYF9uUseKKhSebqpJ2DRMbhOh26xfd96yyO8c-3M/s1600-h/QanaPress.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132438784228233394" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBSrBsfvCvuyL0pT-eOPJpcjvN3LVoUAN9phTd8iXnZPorMgOYfR7E1Mfkh_ntxlYZyPfNer1aV_wQvlplaRy7SID31-Z5HV18d8WuYF9uUseKKhSebqpJ2DRMbhOh26xfd96yyO8c-3M/s320/QanaPress.jpg" border="0" /></a>According to Mr Landes, and we cannot really argue with the theory, this sort of ethics does not exist in various other parts of the world: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">And yet, one of the major differences between Western journalism and self-styled “Islamic media men” emerges on just this issue of the permissibility of staging the news and attitudes towards what constitutes honest information.<br /><br />According to the </span><a href="http://www.ijnet.org/Director.aspx?P=Ethics&ID=38189&LID=1"><span style="font-size:85%;">Islamic Mass Media Charter</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> (Jakarta, 1980), the sacred task of Muslim media men [sic], is on the one hand to protect the Umma from “imminent dangers,” indeed to “censor all materials,” towards that end, and on the other, “To combat Zionism and its colonialist policy of creating settlements as well as its ruthless suppression of the Palestinian people.<br /><br />So when asked why he had inserted unconnected footage of an Israeli soldier firing a rifle into the Al Dura sequence in order to make it look like the Israelis had killed the boy in cold blood, an official of PA TV </span><a href="http://www.seconddraft.org/interview_with_patv_official.php"><span style="font-size:85%;">responded</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">:<br /><br />These are forms of artistic expression, but all of this serves to convey the truth… We never forget our higher journalistic principles to which we are committed of relating the truth and nothing but the truth.<br /><br />When Talal abu Rahmah received an award for his footage of Muhammad al Dura in Morocco in 2001, he told a reporter, “I went into journalism to carry on the fight for my people.”</span></blockquote>This attitude, not by all means a particularly new one in modern history, according to Mr Landes, is what makes it hard for the Western MSM to deal with issues and stories in the Middle East.<br /><br />When one looks at the al-Dura case, Mr Landes agrees that the Western media was in some ways “in” on the secret, which was not really a secret at all. That things are done differently by Palestinians in the Middle East was shrugged off as being one of those cultural things. And, of course, fake photographs and fake films are shown all the time.<br /><br />So, Karsenty’s accusations levelled against France2 and their star reporter Charles Enderlin were nonsensical because they were doing what everybody else does all the time. Pooh!<br /><br />Of course, in certain cases there is a public outcry <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/11/nfox111.xml">as the time</a> the BBC faked scenes of a fox allegedly shaking off rainwater. Apparently it was a tame fox that had water played on it with a hose and that is a shocking thing to show after you tell the audience that the film is completely genuine.<br /><br />Wouldn’t it be nice if the <em>Telegraph</em> displayed the same horrified attitude to the staging of pictures in Gaza or in Lebanon? Dream on.<br /><br />In the Middle East, Mr Landes says, the Western media seems to have accepted the Palestinian view of what journalism is about. As it happens, sometimes the Western media has had no choice in that it was either that or no story.<br /><br />There is also the problem of the local journalist. On the one hand, they are more likely to know and understand what is going on than outsiders; on the other hand, they and their families are hostages to the authorities and they are more likely to be completely unobjective in their coverage of the story.<br /><br />But there are always ways of making it clear that what is being shown or written is pure propaganda that bears little resemblance to the truth.<br /><br />Where we part company with Mr Landes is in his assumption that the Western media is somehow being naïve and almost bamboozled. On the contrary, none of this, not the al-Dura case, not Qana, not that infamous ambulance, not any other manifestation of Pallywood or Hezbollywood could have been so successful without the active participation of our own journalists.<br /><br />It is this that becomes so hard to disentangle and so very important to do. The media has a great deal of power – numerous important decisions taken in politics and in defence as a result of media coverage or campaigning. It is, therefore, important to remember, as we keep repeating on this blog, that the media has a bias, an agenda.<br /><br />We are not talking just of getting stories. All too often this is used as an excuse – gore and death makes good copy, so that is what we show. But it is not just any old gore and death but slanted towards a certain political angle.<br /><br />The second intifada with its plethora of suicide bombers had plenty of gore and death. We saw little enough of it – a first story with a few delicate pictures then “move along, nothing to see here”. There was plenty of nasty Israelis shooting at innocent civilians, particularly children, even if many of those scenes were staged for the benefit of the journalists who could not have not known it.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTLpkr2_Gv-wxBDCNKqlo50rLAw2brLhvanpxIxqW51nA2SiFf0ISShjpiPTLb-rB5q7sfVSPXZ8dZXUTP3voz_5EkRDN2XvgsvN4AAH88gek9ht0lZEMrrd6gpdEo7IZtCx_8l_dNV8Y/s1600-h/Warsaw+Ghetto.bmp"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5132438895897383106" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTLpkr2_Gv-wxBDCNKqlo50rLAw2brLhvanpxIxqW51nA2SiFf0ISShjpiPTLb-rB5q7sfVSPXZ8dZXUTP3voz_5EkRDN2XvgsvN4AAH88gek9ht0lZEMrrd6gpdEo7IZtCx_8l_dNV8Y/s320/Warsaw+Ghetto.bmp" border="0" /></a>Those pictures, those stories have been horribly effective. As Richard Landes writes: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">More ominously, just as Al Dura represents a “higher truth” for Muslims — a justification for hatred, a call to revenge — so does it carry symbolic freight with Europeans. Catherine Nay, a respected news anchor for Europe1, </span><a href="http://www.menapress.com/article.php?sid=1028"><span style="font-size:85%;">welcomed the image</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">:<br /><br />The Death of Muhammad cancels out, erases that of the Jewish child, his hands in the air from the SS in the </span><a href="javascript:void(0)"><span style="font-size:85%;">Warsaw Ghetto</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">.<br /><br />How ironic! The Europeans use an image produced by those who admire the Nazis and dream of </span><a href="http://www.pmw.org.il/tv%20part6.html"><span style="font-size:85%;">genocidal victory over the Jews</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">, to erase their own guilt over the Holocaust. In so doing, Europe has “atoned” for its sins against the Jews by empowering its Muslim extremists.<br /></span></blockquote><p>That very telling picture comes from <a href="http://www.iacenter.org/Palestine/palestinian_resist.htm">International Action Website</a>. Would it make any difference to people who find the juxtaposition comforting if tomorrow's hearing will prove without any doubt that the al-Dura pictures were staged?<br /><br />Perhaps there is a need to forget about the Holocaust and making the Jews of Israel into villainous murderous oppressors, child-killers and torturers helps to assuage Europe's conscience. I am not sure about the thinking being quite so cogent in most cases (Mme Nay is clearly an exception).<br /><br />Or perhaps the West and its self-appointed spokespeople recognize only one story – the victim being oppressed. The Jews have refused to be victims in Israel; they have had to be made into oppressors. The Palestinians seem to be happy to be eternal victims and their story is accepted through staged "documentary" footage.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=59267#59267"target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-64769896146453085522007-10-22T00:38:00.000+01:002007-10-22T01:02:58.222+01:00Meanwhile, out there in the big bad worldWords have been exchanged on EUReferendum (not on the forum – those do not count as WORDS) and I can report that the Great Leader is displeased with his humble acolyte (that’s me) probably because she is not ‘umble enough.<br /><br />Nevertheless, said not very ‘umble acolyte insists on posting about the big wide world out there, which, oddly enough, continues to exist and have its own problems while we all wring our hands and have hysterics about the <strike>Constitutional</strike> <strike>Reform</strike> Lisbon Treaty, just as we did after all the previous treaties. Been there, done that, unlike, I suspect, a very large number of our forum members.<br /><br />How many, I wonder, of all those people who are having the vapours now sat through the Maastricht debates in Parliament or campaigned actively for a referendum on that rather ghastly treaty?<br /><br />Anyway, that was not what convinced the Great Leader to let his not so ‘umble acolyte to write what she thinks is of some interest but a threat to have hysterics of her own. Nobody wants that, I am sure.<br /><br />So, the big bad world. Firstly, ladies and gentlemen, we have Turkey, a country of some importance to Britain, those who fight against terror and the EU. Two problems have agitated that country and its allies: Kurds and Armenians.<br /><br />The two problems are very different as I shall try to analyze in this posting but there is are certain vague parallels. Both groups appear to be eternal victims of their various neighbours.<br /><br />Armenian history is considerably more tragic and horrific than that of the Jews (no slouches when it comes to inducing justified guilt) and the Kurds appear to be uniformly oppressed by all the countries within which they find themselves: Iraq, Iran, Turkey and, I now discover, Syria.<br /><br />The second strand that runs through both problems is the continuing development of Turkish national identity that began as the Ottoman Empire fell and the new Turkish Republic was proclaimed. Though, of course, as every school child knows, the Armenian massacre of 1915 was carried out under the Ottoman Empire, its importance and the number of Armenians murdered or ethnically cleansed, as we call this ancient practice nowadays, appears to be of importance to those who argue that what is now Turkey has always been largely populated by Turks, in itself a hard to define ethnic group.<br /><br />I have no desire to discuss the actual rights and wrongs (mostly wrongs) of the Armenian massacre or genocide, as this is a matter for historians who know more about it than I do. Nor do I understand precisely what the word genocide is supposed to mean. Instead I shall focus on the ongoing rumpus that might have severe consequences for the alliance against terrorism and, of course, for the EU as it turns once again to the discussion of what to do about Turkey.<br /><br />It is, of course, possible that one look at the <strike>Constitutional</strike> <strike>Reform</strike> Lisbon Treaty will shake the Turks into an understanding that they are better off outside the walls of this benighted entity.<br /><br />An <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/17/asia/genocide.php?page=2">article</a> in the International Herald Tribune quoted Can Paker, a member of Turkey’s biggest employers’ group. <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The road to accession - democracy and human rights - is much more important than accession itself. Who knows what will happen in fifteen years? Turkey may not even want to join Europe anymore.</span></blockquote>These are comments that have been heard for some time and while it may sound jolly to the ears of those who are terrified of Turkey’s membership, others in the EU are a little worried. As we have pointed out before, if the European Union is serious in its desire to have a functioning military force, it more or less has to have Turkey as a member. <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Turkey has the second-biggest army in NATO and is a regular contributor to EU peacekeeping operations. Some 250 Turkish soldiers are in Bosnia as part of an EU force and Paris has asked Ankara to join an operation that will go to Chad. A Muslim country that is an ally of Israel, Turkey is also crucial to uniting the countries around the Mediterranean.</span></blockquote>As the Wall Street Journal <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110010760">says</a>, Turkey is crucial to any kind of a reasonable settlement in the Middle East and the country’s views have to be taken into consideration from time to time.<br /><br />The other issues, dear to President Sarkozy’s heart (when he can spare time from his own and France’s domestic issues), investment by French firms in Turkey do not, actually, need Turkey’s membership. All of that can be negotiated. Indeed, the most useful negotiations would be for a series of genuine free-trade agreements but that is unlikely to happen.<br /><br />Let’s take the Armenian issue first as it is more convoluted, though as the Wall Street Journal <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110010760">points out</a>, the PKK, the Marxist terrorist Kurdish organization, which has been responsible for a large number of Kurdish as well as Turkish deaths, is no slouch at using it for its own purposes.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXucWaswa6RqIgA7IS5RPz32L_xWoPRzTGmZb_MyIC6rr8DnkNSUAnNIxjRveDS-Y51GOCQ4lwCi_iA8gKLdM3R6x666JfuYb7y15aL1eE0KXHXhB6uX1FY6NT4ZidnbLsd4uuCm2PBng/s1600-h/Turkey_protest.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123942858677686482" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXucWaswa6RqIgA7IS5RPz32L_xWoPRzTGmZb_MyIC6rr8DnkNSUAnNIxjRveDS-Y51GOCQ4lwCi_iA8gKLdM3R6x666JfuYb7y15aL1eE0KXHXhB6uX1FY6NT4ZidnbLsd4uuCm2PBng/s320/Turkey_protest.JPG" border="0" /></a><br />Across-border PKK attacks were carefully timed to coincide with various stages of Congress discussing the non-binding resolution to call the Armenian massacre of 1915 a “genocide”. There is nothing the PKK would like more than ensure a division between the United States and Turkey. Europe, I suspect, they care less about as both the EU and its member states have shown themselves to be rather soft on the PKK.<br /><br />The latest attack <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071021/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey_kurds">was reported</a> today. 12 Turkish soldiers were killed in an ambush.<br /><br />What has triggered off the Armenian row once again, as I said above, was the ongoing attempt to pass a non-binding Resolution through Congress making it non-bindingly compulsory to refer to the events of 1915 as “genocide”. We have been here before, both in France and <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010745">in the United States</a>.<br /><br />Seven years ago a Republican Speaker of the House, J. Denis Hastert, tried to introduce a very similar Resolution and <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E1D6133EF933A15753C1A9669C8B63">backed down</a> minutes before it was due to be voted on under pressure from President Clinton, who used very similar arguments to the ones President Bush is using now: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">In a telephone call late Wednesday and in a letter today, Mr. Clinton urged Mr. Hastert to withdraw the measure, saying it could inflame tensions in the Middle East, embolden President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and interfere with American efforts to stabilize the Balkans.<br /><br />In addition, Turkey had threatened to ground American warplanes that fly out of Turkish air bases to patrol northern Iraq, and cancel a $4.5 billion deal to buy 145 attack helicopters made in Texas. Angry crowds have protested outside the United States Embassy in Ankara.</span></blockquote>So this is not a question of Democrats leaning one way and Republicans another but Representatives responding to lobbying from Armenian-American groups and the Executive pointing out certain unwelcome truths.<br /><br />James Taranto’s <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010745">summary</a> of the issues cannot be bettered in my opinion. <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">This is a very odd debate. For one thing, it is ultimately about nothing: Congress is not proposing to pass any law, merely to issue a nonbinding resolution--a statement of opinion. Congress issues such resolutions all the time, but usually they are either uncontroversial ("</span><a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll009.xml" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:85%;">recognizing the 90th birthday of Ronald Reagan</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">") or intended to put lawmakers on the spot by forcing them to take sides on some contentious question (such as whether to </span><a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110010658" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:85%;">repudiate MoveOn.org's McCarthylike tactics</span></a><span style="font-size:85%;">). In this case, the statement itself is the point of the resolution.<br /><br />Another odd aspect to the debate is the asymmetry between the two sides. The strongest proponents of the resolution are Armenian-American groups and congressmen with many constituents of Armenian extraction. There is little domestic opposition, but the Turkish government is vehemently against the resolution--so much so that it recalled its ambassador from Washington last week merely because the House Foreign Affairs Committee gave the resolution the nod, and it is making noises about evicting America from the Incirlik air base, which is crucial to the Iraq effort. For this reason, the White House strongly opposes the resolution.</span></blockquote>He is also right, in my opinion, in the conclusions he is drawing about the whole brouhaha. Firstly, it is time Turkey started coming to terms with the complicated history of the pre-Ottoman period, the Ottoman Empire and the post-Ottoman republic.<br /><br />Mr Taranto is a tad cavalier in his dismissal of Turkish problems of identity and does not show any real understanding of the history. To say that well, America puts up with all sorts of insults and lives with them, is not sufficient. Turkey is not the United States and the two histories are very different. Also, let us face it, Americans get rightly upset at the never-ending avalanche.<br /><br />I think there are signs that the Turks are moving in the right direction, though the Armenian issue remains a major stumbling block. It was marvellous to see in Istanbul that there are serious attempts to study and correlate the Byzantine and Ottoman parts of the city’s history and architecture, the latter being quite similar. There are half-hearted attempts to preserve the spectacular monuments of both historical periods.<br /><br />Although there are continuing trials and threatened trials of Turkish and Armenian writers and historians who insist on saying the unsayable about 1915 (Mr Taranto is right about that being a more relevant issue for Congress to tackle) it is notable that each time there is a huge outcry in the country. In other words, there are many Turks who are not afraid to face the truth.<br /><br />At the same time, it is no business of any political body to pass laws or resolutions about historical events and their interpretation. As readers of the blog (one of the blogs – I get confused) know we strongly oppose making Holocaust denial illegal. We also strongly disagree with those who deny the Holocaust but that is a separate issue. In our opinion, even Germany and Austria have progressed far enough down the democratic route to be in a position to repeal that post-WWII piece of legislation. Instead, of course, there are endless proposals to extend the ban throughout the EU.<br /><br />The last time a legislative body outside Turkey <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/10/completely-mad.html">took it upon itself to pronounce </a>on whether the events of 1915 constituted genocide or not was in France last year <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/17/asia/genocide.php?page=1">when the National Assembly passed a Bill</a>, which made it illegal to call those events anything but genocide. <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Ankara circulated unofficial guidelines discouraging business with French companies after Parliament here passed a first Armenia bill in 2001; exports plunged by nearly 40 percent. When a second bill - which would make it illegal to deny that the Armenians suffered genocide - was drawn up last year, the Turkish government cut off military relations with Paris, scrapping automatic overflight rights and port access.</span></blockquote>Relations are beginning to warm up because it has been made clear to Turkey that the Bill will not go through the second and final vote in the Senate. As it was a political move by the Assembly, the aim being to prevent Turkey’s accession to the EU at any time in the next fifty years (assuming the EU survives that long), it is not unreasonable for the Turkish government to respond with political actions.<br /><br />Mindful of those contracts, France blinked first. <em>Tant pis</em>.<br /><br />The other big issue is the PKK that seems to have established itself in the semi-autonomous Kurdish area of Iraq. This is one of those occasions that one must admit the Americans have rather mismanaged matters.<br /><br />The idea that the PKK could simply go on operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan, without any hindrance from the Kurdish authorities (the Iraqi government has next to no power in the area) and possibly even with some support and the Turks will do nothing about it was fatuous to put it mildly.<br /><br />No country can tolerate constant attacks across the border by an openly Marxist and historically terrorist organization. Four days ago the Turkish Parliament <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/18/europe/18turkey.php">voted with overwhelming majority</a> “to authorize sending troops into northern Iraq to confront Kurdish rebels in hideouts there”.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUVmFIbFf_ZTGDPtQHhyetST7bTfFm6gyraeqt8q01Id9dXTzH95o05xYIDN91hWnOHVZvb75_r4hPrkm9CSZAk9S2qP1vsdYntH69W7pRQhicC_uHoqTC0cR4AglD9VZP6GtFE9YIhbA/s1600-h/Barzani_Bush.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123943369778794722" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUVmFIbFf_ZTGDPtQHhyetST7bTfFm6gyraeqt8q01Id9dXTzH95o05xYIDN91hWnOHVZvb75_r4hPrkm9CSZAk9S2qP1vsdYntH69W7pRQhicC_uHoqTC0cR4AglD9VZP6GtFE9YIhbA/s320/Barzani_Bush.JPG" border="0" /></a>What is astonishing is Turkey’s patience so far. Even after the vote they proclaimed that they would not act unless they really had to.<br /><br />It is interesting to note that clearly the froideur between the army and the AKP dominated Parliament has been laid aside. On this matter the Turks are united, whether it be secularists or Islamists and, really, one cannot blame them.<br /><br />The vote provoked frantic activity with promises by the US and Iraqi leaders that something will be done very very soon. And not a moment too soon, as the Wall Street Journal <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/weekend/hottopic/?id=110010760">wrote yesterday</a>: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The PKK also reads the papers, and its leaders timed their attacks on consecutive weekends this month as the resolution moved through the House. The Marxist separatist group, whose 20-year war has claimed almost 40,000 lives, would love to divide the U.S. from Turkey. Unless managed right, the Turkish response this week also imperils improving bilateral ties between Ankara and Baghdad; the countries had only recently signed a counterterrorism pact. In Turkey itself, PKK support is dwindling, and Mr. Erdogan's ruling party swept the Kurdish-majority areas in July's elections.<br /><br />To avoid the trap set by the PKK, the U.S. needs to press the Iraqi Kurds to act against them. This doesn't have to hurt America's friendly dealings with the Kurds. But someone has to remind Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's Kurdish region, that the PKK poses a grave threat to the economic boom and stability of northern Iraq. His aggressive rhetoric toward Turkey, and the<br />Kurdish peshmerga militia's disinterest in cracking down on the PKK, gives the wrong impression of complicity with the terrorists. With typical bluster, Mr. Barzani yesterday said he'd fight the Turks--hardly helpful.<br /><br />Short of declaring war on the PKK, the peshmerga could easily cut off supply lines of food and arms into the Qandil mountains. The Turks want the U.S. to nab a few big PKK fish, which is easier said than done. But Ankara isn't unreasonable to expect to see more of an effort. In return, its troops can stay on their side of the border.</span></blockquote>Sadly, those promises made four days ago have so far produced no results. To the contrary, <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/21/europe/turkey.php">there was another ambush</a> and another 12 Turkish soldiers killed with, apparently, some taken hostage. The Turkish government may well have its hand forced. I suspect American and Iraqi negotiators are scurrying round the region even as I write this. If so, better late than never, though one must admit neither Massoud Barzani’s smugness nor Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s bland statements about terrorist acts being against Iraqi constitution fill one with any kind of optimism.Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-34824746835272370312007-10-18T17:00:00.000+01:002007-10-18T17:12:41.364+01:00For the want of something bettter to do.I enjoy writing to MP's. It's nice to be constantly reminded how impotent our elected servants are. Today I am feeling particularly sarcastic and have recycled my work (one must do ones bit for the environment) and heavily plagiarised EU referendum.<br /><br />Dear Phillip, (is that one L or two?)<br /><br />I am aware that you must have better things to do than read emails from non-constituents but you are the closest thing to a Conservative in the district and so I thought it better to make you aware of this. You need take no action but this is just to lodge firmly in your mind why this government is not to be trusted with our money.<br /><br />There is on the Bradford junction of the M62, not one but two of these...<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://umbrellog.com/images/signofthetimes.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 277px; height: 207px;" src="http://umbrellog.com/images/signofthetimes.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Solar and wind powered speed signs. I would not belittle your worth by asking you to ask the Secretary of State for Transport how much these things cost. I am quite sure we will not like the answer. I shall not ask what was wrong with the conventional reflective signs either.<br /><br />The point is, and I ask you this as a taxpayer, when I have state hired goons from private debt companies threatening to bash down my door to collect the pound of flesh that I owe to the fiefdom, why on earth should I part with a single penny if this is how they intend on spending it? I already know the answer to that. Because they will bash down your door and arrest you again if you don't.<br /><br />Does this ring true with David Camerons vision of Britain when he opines that "We're living in a new world of freedom, where people have more power and control over their own lives"??<br /><br />Secondly, On returning from my expedition to obtain that photograph I followed a police transit van marked "this vehicle is fitted with Per-Tec emmsission control". Since when were police vehicles considered suitable advertising space and furthermore, do they not think that it would produce considerably less emissions were it not armoured like a Fort Knox vault?<br /><br />This also begs the question, and I understand there may be some call for armoured vehicles in certain areas of Bradford, as to why I have seen half a dozen heavily armoured police vans in the last few days? Are the police expecting something we should know about? Perhaps the peasants revolt is closer than we thought? Not before time if so.<br /><br />And is it not curious that the police should have the luxury of heavily armoured vehicles yet the soldiers we send to actual war zones do not? See my prior letter about Snatch Land Rovers.<br /><br />This is what worries me. In what ways will a conservative victory change this?<br /><br />Yours sincerely,<br /><br />Peter North.Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-61654362821458383042007-10-18T14:04:00.000+01:002007-10-18T14:15:22.335+01:00The symbol of our ageOne London Blogger has been musing as to what to do with that <a href="http://onelondon.blogspot.com/2007/09/its-that-plinth-again.html">fourth plinth</a> in Trafalgar Square. She suggests that we "leave the fourth plinth empty as a comment on the modern world". Well, if we do want to offer a comment on modern Britain, and one which is not entirely dissimilar to that which has <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YYzqopHfWfHIAsIYVyYYrzYrhikxDvIIlJ1mmPgftf2_ZWW_cT7FMkLeSPZohwx5htCnTejvP0zr29ABPIRAmbJIJkyKhK-wFhjNvNKRDlJK-DCT8qt5UqQ5iLlm6o5wFrUHYb_Q0xw/s320/Hotel_for_the_birds.jpg">gone up in place</a> of the grotesque Alison Lapper statue, then I humbly suggest this...<br /><br />Our very own combi solar/wind speed trap.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc1yrdUhhXiuy3e-m9c2mU39wPZgK9ko06LnZkM5TJcsAM9sX2NXae8UnKqbqN4l8ac6VigEAygaVvWjkwHfem3Q9XcyW6Up6Z803c2VJBiXNjDPjZ8Mwcnfpgf4empH1M8lQb_rISlM5a/s1600-h/signofthetimes.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 340px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc1yrdUhhXiuy3e-m9c2mU39wPZgK9ko06LnZkM5TJcsAM9sX2NXae8UnKqbqN4l8ac6VigEAygaVvWjkwHfem3Q9XcyW6Up6Z803c2VJBiXNjDPjZ8Mwcnfpgf4empH1M8lQb_rISlM5a/s320/signofthetimes.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5122663869517845218" border="0" /></a>Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-33704982421422814992007-10-17T11:30:00.000+01:002007-10-18T11:40:36.416+01:00What do we know? We just live here.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnHBssnXOnLLFeH3Nl07BqxNVUZl_t3Crm8buvMoAl-VxmJfCilo-30GvDYgBtMmij65zhDCVvfaecxKMq1THJMGqgqJjvuJunL3reeLjxQuQSpPQbjO6BmjkwxJpQhnmsdB78GDxtK5DJ/s1600-h/ride_with_hitler.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnHBssnXOnLLFeH3Nl07BqxNVUZl_t3Crm8buvMoAl-VxmJfCilo-30GvDYgBtMmij65zhDCVvfaecxKMq1THJMGqgqJjvuJunL3reeLjxQuQSpPQbjO6BmjkwxJpQhnmsdB78GDxtK5DJ/s320/ride_with_hitler.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5122619592699990738" border="0" /></a>Shortly before I was fired for spending too much time reading political blogs instead of working, I commuted one of the most stressful motorways in the North. A stretch joining the M62 took 30 minutes to travel 300 yards. Alistair Darling thought he'd <a href="http://www.highways.gov.uk/knowledge/9897.aspx">ease our troubles</a> by making one lane on the junction a car sharing lane at the bargain price of £4 million. He thinks merging three lanes of traffic into two will ease congestion. <br /><br />For whom? Users of the M62 coming from Manchester because the people of Bradford will no longer be able to get to the M62. Instead they will go join the other queue to get to Leeds, the one that goes past all those schools etc.<br /><br />Apparently the councils objections were overturned and according to local MP Phillip Davies, "I am afraid that these things are not debated in parliament; they are just done", "The Highways Agency are given permission by the Secretary of State for Transport - the only thing we can do is hold the Minister to account in parliament". So that's alright then.<br /><br />So, remind me, and perhaps I'm showing my ignorance here but, why do we pay these people? Is the House of Commons just the most expensive town clock in history? Sure, one would hope our MP's had better things to do than discuss a piffling £4 million road "improvement" but turning motorway junctions into car sharing lanes? Our council didn't get a say. Our MP did not get a say. So who did?<br /><br />And then there's the other question. Why does it cost £4 million? Give me a couple of months, a vat of white paint and a digital camera and I'll do it for a million quid.<br /><br />The thinking is that this will encourage car pooling. I can't speak for others but the whole reason I bothered to learn to drive was so that I did not have to share my morning commute with the rest of the great unwashed. I do not want to know who scored what in whatever final and alas, I don't care what happened to Maddy. There. I said it. I can't even hide from it in the pages of the Daily Telegraph now that is a spun rag comic.<br /><br />On the one day I did volunteer for car sharing I had two noisy women gabbing in the back for a whole hour on the basis I would qualify for a parking spot at work. I made every effort to convince them my driving standards were not worth the risk again. As it happens, the only reason there were no parking spaces at work was because of council limits imposed at the inception of the business park. Go figure.<br /><br />North Senior asked me to look at some papers outlining how high occupancy lanes have a deleterious effect on traffic flows and speeds. I am not going to read them. You don't have to be a traffic planner to know that three lanes into two causes congestion, creates longer tailbacks and damages the environment having more cars idling for longer. Anyone who has been on the M1 just south of Watford knows this. But those inside the M25 wouldn't have a clue. And that's why we're getting one anyway.<br /><br />If they really were sincere about taking cars off the road they would be offering tax incentives to companies who facilitated home working. When I think of all the jobs I've resigned from because of dreadful commutes, I cannot think of one that could not have been done more effectively form my desk here at home. Or at least could have done if BT could give me a stable connection to the internet.<br /><br />Perhaps the fines they collect from high occupancy lanes could be directed at improving our broadband infrastructure which is <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/09/26/bcnbroadband.xml">badly falling behind</a> other economies of Europe in order to facilitate it?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5189" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-81602968483483210262007-10-16T19:57:00.001+01:002007-10-18T11:42:12.331+01:00Pulling Teeth<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.charlesatkins.com/Pulling_teeth_for_topics1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 291px; height: 218px;" src="http://www.charlesatkins.com/Pulling_teeth_for_topics1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>This week's Twighlight zone UK story is <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=487784&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=322">this</a> . Dental patients now pulling their own teeth for want of an NHS dentist. So the NHS system has now failed in completion. So if we pay for a service and it is not there when we need it, why do we still pay for it? Well, we know very well what happens when you <a href="http://umbrellog3.blogspot.com/2007/10/and-then-they-came-for-me.html">do not pay</a>. People have too much to lose to take the state on even when they are forced to perform surgery on themselves.<br /><br />It is said that non-participation in democratic affairs is due to apathy. Not surprising given that if you approach a like minded MP over a matter of national urgency such as The Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill, you get the interested but sympathetic brush off. In this case Philip Davies MP and other cases, such as the Snatch Landrover debate, Marsha Singh or rather his disinterested assistant, offers his displeasure at the tone of my emails and "feels my comments to be gratuitous". I asked him tell that to <a href="http://theothercovenant.blogspot.com/">Susan Smith</a>. Alas no reply.<br /><br />But it is not apathy that lets politicians get away with it. It is pure selfishness. Would I really have lifted a finger were I not staring down the proverbial barrel of the state shotgun? Probably not. Do people give a damn that soldiers die in battle because of poor choices made my worse politicians? No. Why? because it does not affect them directly. Does someone in a cushy council job care that their wage is paid by threat of violence and dispossession? Nope.<br /><br />Not until everyone feels the consequences of this increasingly authoritarian and kleptocratic government will there be any significant change. But that is unlikely. They chip away bit by bit, the noose slowly tightening until we all realise what has happened long past the time to act.<br /><br />In many cases I wish I never bothered to pass my driving test because I am now the number one target for taxes and state harassment. As an evil polluter, as they have made me out to be, a terrorizer of children for driving over 30mph where it is safe to do so, I am likely to receive no moral support from an increasingly cowardly public who have neither the brains to see or the courage to fight. And that is exactly why they will win. Demonize then harass at our expense. That is how it's done.<br /><br />Meanwhile we are looking at an epidemic of dead bailiffs on the doorstep if this actually goes through. When people feel more threatened by their government than they do the "criminals" people will start arming themselves with or without the influence of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5055724.stm">Radio 1 hip-hop DJ's</a>.<br /><br />So we have crap public services, Islamic fundamentalism running rife, thuggish and violent officials who practice extortion and authorities that will pull down your extension if not inspected and approved, far left propaganda on state TV designed to provoke anti-semitism and more than a third of people dependant on aid payments and now a population that feels the best way to stay free is to get armed to the teeth. Did I move to Gaza?<br /><br />Sometimes I wonder if those nutters they find living in bedsits, armed to the teeth with stacks of BNP propaganda in the corner of the room know something we don't. Given that every time a state official comes to my house it costs me hundreds of pounds, one time because I replaced my kitchen roof, I am inclined to gut like a fish, the next spineless creature to slither up to my door.Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-56456974758736718422007-10-16T16:23:00.001+01:002007-10-17T11:18:28.245+01:00And then they came for me<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhch9M45W6dWcnQ_2uQKmFEBqfhuvNSi7iUMMH6ZOdlHQED0VzpdXvPeS9LcPvODFbI69PYv86uNykcV2j8xroauovfUhv8_OOZCGoXFKJKWFJyB9Z86ooDNIH78HUNCAtGG0fnqD7lDha-/s1600-h/dsc_0014.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 243px; height: 330px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhch9M45W6dWcnQ_2uQKmFEBqfhuvNSi7iUMMH6ZOdlHQED0VzpdXvPeS9LcPvODFbI69PYv86uNykcV2j8xroauovfUhv8_OOZCGoXFKJKWFJyB9Z86ooDNIH78HUNCAtGG0fnqD7lDha-/s320/dsc_0014.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5121964210755392178" border="0" /></a>While civil liberties campaigners panic about 90 day detentions, ID cards and the "police state" brought in by the terrorism bill, it is always the boring stuff under the radar that that has more potential to infringe on liberty and breach our most basic of rights.<br /><br />It would not matter if the Terrorism Bill was fair and just. I, like many, have no confidence that the police or the courts will use these laws in the spirit in which they were intended, and therefore must be opposed (and probably will be). However, the really boring stuff, the <a href="http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page12023.asp">Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Bill</a> will probably slip onto the statute book unnoticed.<br /><br />In effect this will remove any right a person has to defend their property against the already lawless thuggery of debt collectors and bailiffs. Why on earth they are bothering when they already get away with breaking the law with the full support of the police is beyond my comprehension.<br /><br />The law does mean that the awkward squad, the "won't pays", will be subject to a good kicking on refusal to pay parking fines/council tax should they defend the privacy of their homes. If I'm honest with myself I probably have it coming because of the contempt I show for the law in motoring and tax matters. However, I fear this has grave ramifications for those who genuinely don't have money and don't have access to any either.<br /><br />This will be another free hand for the police and state hired thugs to do as they please, whenever they please. What can start out as a £90 fine can finish up as a bill of thousands, a prison sentence and one more generally law abiding citizens life smashed because the fiefdom demands its pound of flesh.<br /><br />Most people support speeding fines and such but we are being fined for more and more things; accidentally crossing into a bus lane, selling something in pounds and ounces, putting things in the wrong bin. All seemingly harmless on the face of it but the manner in which they prosecute is arbitrary, bullying and unfair. When those who cant afford it say they can't pay, they lose all protection from the law and the courts pass it onto debt collectors without even offering a payment plan. You are then on your own.<br /><br />Perversely, if you are a violent criminal you have your day in court. You have your chance to defend yourself and present evidence and it will be considered by a panel of your peers. If you are a law abiding citizen who accidentally falls fouls of the system, they will smash you and they will do everything to prevent you getting a hearing until your only recourse is to do physical harm on those trying to remove your property in order to get a fair hearing.<br /><br />One is left wondering how come there always seems to be a human right for terrorists who want to kill us, but nothing of the sort for those who don't have any money and just want to defend their property from the state?<br /><br />I often hear the words "it's not safe out on the streets at night". Rubbish. The people I have most cause to be afraid of are the state hired thugs and the police acting in support of them. Until today I had no cause to lock my front door. I now think differently.<br /><br />For, today they are coming for me. They are threatening to clamp my car and cease my goods because I am unemployed and can't pay a speeding fine. They wouldn't hold the bailiffs off after I paid them half of the fine and they have slapped £150 on the bill and they have not given me any options. So, today I will become a criminal because I will do whatever it takes to stop them clamping my car or taking any of my meagre collection of possessions. And all this because I simply didn't have £45 to spare when they originally demanded it.<br /><br />Why are they allowed to do this? How many people more people will the state hound into criminality for the crime of being skint? More importantly, do they allow you to have books in a police detention cell? I really must finish The Great Deception.<br /><br />Update... For once the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5377488.stm">BBC has made itself useful.</a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5182" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-3923351154386150892007-10-14T20:41:00.001+01:002007-10-14T21:23:56.316+01:00Observations on hospital hygiene<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvWUORPPC6CcLvni4UEOdcGPJ0qddsiHyf4pJBrlDO8UF0Go8BreleKMa3eUfgtdGtVwmVL25mHKrZHVkpIE0jOSWVQXadUQs8sm8HXuHBEp2ylTKCaBQwpLWBsmkfaCFvOaAvM491brw0/s1600-h/cleaner+03.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5121280205962189442" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvWUORPPC6CcLvni4UEOdcGPJ0qddsiHyf4pJBrlDO8UF0Go8BreleKMa3eUfgtdGtVwmVL25mHKrZHVkpIE0jOSWVQXadUQs8sm8HXuHBEp2ylTKCaBQwpLWBsmkfaCFvOaAvM491brw0/s320/cleaner+03.jpg" border="0" /></a>With hospital infection very much <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2652921.ece" target="_blank">in the news</a>, and various commentators expressing <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/14/nfanu114.xml" target="_blank">their views</a> on the issue, it takes a Doctor from Barnsley in South Yorkshire to put his finger on a larger part of the problem.<br /><br />This is Dr Tim Healey, and he writes:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:95%;">The fault lies in the system. When cleaning staff were employed by hospitals, the cleaners' work was the responsibility of the hospital secretary and the matron. Now the cleaners are employed by an outside contractor, who is less able to tell how or if his staff carry out the work for which he and they are paid. I have seen a so-called cleaner casually push a dry mop over a narrow strip running down the centre of a ward, while a staff-nurse had to go down on her hands and knees to use paper towels to erase blood stains that had been on the floor for at least two days.</span></blockquote>However, Dr Healey is only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Underneath lies a problem of massive proportions. At its heart is the fundamental problem that cleaning contractors are not in the business to clean. If they try to do so, they lose money. The whole industry, therefore, is devoted to "not cleaning", from which it derives its profit margins.<br /><br />The arithmetic of this Faustian arrangement is brutally simple. Firstly, in an industry that is highly competitive, with hospitals – whatever they might say – selecting on lowest price, the pressure is on for bidding firms to cut margins to the quick. In fact, so intensive is the competition that bids are routinely submitted at such a low price that there is no profit to be made.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mefFNWcvSP368HLYhvt0SigwDluRjbA6XJ-RpFYOi6ZZ4H-rmqmjQiHWcGlmCEb8Rt2SbWi6qni8oy1Fz5UV2NgXh9EYJdjD2l0BbqxmTutx4lathXc6urr6vy4MJwXX1y0KffMnGd4O/s1600-h/Cleaner+01.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5121282469409954466" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9mefFNWcvSP368HLYhvt0SigwDluRjbA6XJ-RpFYOi6ZZ4H-rmqmjQiHWcGlmCEb8Rt2SbWi6qni8oy1Fz5UV2NgXh9EYJdjD2l0BbqxmTutx4lathXc6urr6vy4MJwXX1y0KffMnGd4O/s320/Cleaner+01.jpg" border="0" /></a>Once the contract is successfully gained, however, a deliberate "cost recovery" strategy is put into place. In the initial phases, the contract is maintained to the letter, while senior staff from the cleaning company "learn" the client's representatives – the contract supervisors - where they look, what their expectations are, how to flatter them and keep them generally schmoozled.<br /><br />Once this is done, the contract managers can then start to cut corners. Cleaning staff that go sick are not replaced and no allowance is made for staff on holiday. Teams are cut back, by ones and twos, or diverted to other jobs, for whole or parts of their shifts. Areas which are "non-critical" or low visibility are cleaned at reducing intervals and, sometimes, not at all.<br /><br />Gradually, the staff servicing the contract are whittled down, materials budgets are cut back and equipment is either diverted to other jobs or, if it breaks down, is not repaired or replaced. Then the contract starts making money.<br /><br />During that phase, complaints start rising. But there is a calculated procedure for dealing with them. First of all, the "client" is schmoozled, with profuse apologies, regrets and promises. A "remedial" team is put in with great show to deal with specific complaints, all to satisfy the client that things are being done. Staff may even be "fired" – i.e., transferred to other jobs, the people displaced coming in as "fresh" workers.<br /><br />Over time, however, corners continue to be cut, standards deteriorate and the excuses and showmanship cease to work. The client gets more and more fed up. But hey! It is a five year contract, and there are only two to go, so it is not worth fighting about it. It is made clear that the contractor need not apply for a renewal.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZNaZltek10UNVD2Ao1IcrMl-EIv3z0LYCJI_B-2JX_6c_aulJqCicOIKzO26pZRpPaVT9orlLKmbLbzNnB188nfxYLJimZPkgAEaOVAku32gtPkUw_gHsQplCGG9A1RPKMr5nc7YZNy4G/s1600-h/Cleaner+2.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5121282022733355666" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZNaZltek10UNVD2Ao1IcrMl-EIv3z0LYCJI_B-2JX_6c_aulJqCicOIKzO26pZRpPaVT9orlLKmbLbzNnB188nfxYLJimZPkgAEaOVAku32gtPkUw_gHsQplCGG9A1RPKMr5nc7YZNy4G/s320/Cleaner+2.JPG" border="0" /></a>This is when the money is really made. There is now little pretence at maintaining standards, and the contract is milked for all it is worth. When the final day comes, the staff are laid off and the contractor's management depart. A new contractor moves in, hires the old staff and the cycle starts all over again.<br /><br />The rub is that there are only about five or six really big players in the business who can handle the paperwork and bureaucracy of NHS contracts. And they are all playing the same game. So, as one player loses the contract, another – who as just lost a contract somewhere else – moves in. After ten or fifteen years, when client's staff have moved on and memories have faded, the original firm can get back in, and start all over again.<br /><br />This is the way the system works. The "churn" rate is phenomenal as the same small group of companies cycle endlessly through the same group of "customers", all with one objective – to milk the system of as much money as they can before being chucked out, until it is their turn to try again.<br /><br />Whatever else is wrong with the NHS, the system of contract cleaning cannot – and never will – work. Despite the apparent inefficiencies, directly employed labour under the control of hospital operational staff, are the only way to secure good standards of routine cleaning.<br /><br />And how do I know all this? Well, in my third career, I was in the game, working for a "household name" international cleaning contractor. As a technical expert, I thought I had joined the firm to clean things. I was soon disabused of that. "We don't make money by cleaning things," I was told firmly. "We make money by <em>not</em> cleaning them."<br /><br />It is a lesson I never forgot.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5170" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02561483930556493363noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-5426301057729356022007-10-13T19:54:00.000+01:002007-10-13T20:43:18.912+01:00Adding value<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtN-3bRwpsZ3ukL0d-z5H2i7puLnGXcPXqEyf8h3ifUy7uoSFzRY5DAdn_xoWTBPCV61JM0NQLM5ixpG7sp0ohK2O_5MFGA0Bc2rtzpWU6D8-1R-gsNYwkxxMkejS5-bVCOFkz_pYOsfkU/s1600-h/journal2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtN-3bRwpsZ3ukL0d-z5H2i7puLnGXcPXqEyf8h3ifUy7uoSFzRY5DAdn_xoWTBPCV61JM0NQLM5ixpG7sp0ohK2O_5MFGA0Bc2rtzpWU6D8-1R-gsNYwkxxMkejS5-bVCOFkz_pYOsfkU/s320/journal2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120902184415631890" /></a>Despite the oft' expressed contempt for the mainstream media (or MSM as we have all learned to call it), the standard fare of many political and "news" bloggers is the stories delivered by the MSM and the various newsgathering agencies. But, simply regurgitating their material is a waste of time and effort. To succeed as a blogger, you must add value.<br /><br />That is not to say that repeating a story picked up from the media is always bad tactics. An especially good – or bad – story is worth noting and, if the source is relatively obscure and might have been missed, bringing the item to your readers’ attention is doing them a service. Equally, summarising a long and convoluted article, highlighting the main points – or those you think important – adds value to the blog.<br /><br />By and large though, readers who are interested in current affairs can pick up what they need from <em>Google News</em> or from any one of a number of news aggregator sites. Those who want to keep an eye on particular subjects can use the invaluable <em>Google Alert</em> service, which sends an e-mail whenever something of interest occurs. No blogger can match the scope and immediacy of these services, and it is not even worth trying.<br /><br />However, using the MSM as a resource, there are several ways you can add value and thereby make your post worth reading.<br /><br />The first, most simple technique is to widen the scope. On picking up one report of an event, from a single source such as a newspaper site, you can than check to see whether others have reported it.<br /><br />Instead of then just regurgitating one newspaper's "take" on an issue, you can build a summary of your own, which synthesises the reports from several journalists. Very often, points of detail which are found in one paper are missing from another, enabling you to build up a more comprehensive account than can be gleaned from any one source. Add in links to comment from other bloggers and from agency reports, and the piece assumes the dimensions of an entirely original work.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Gex41pSHg3S0_ZDa3jloaiekw8kHYr0MoPXLfrMoCyZLu9t6Fe4dWW3suVfKavg9dtebBOIJ_0oIXJZoMNkk7iN09M5M8z215hPsG4YrX_rCrcCJBBw0UXYn6shZWxF9e04_keB518cG/s1600-h/Tornado+003.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Gex41pSHg3S0_ZDa3jloaiekw8kHYr0MoPXLfrMoCyZLu9t6Fe4dWW3suVfKavg9dtebBOIJ_0oIXJZoMNkk7iN09M5M8z215hPsG4YrX_rCrcCJBBw0UXYn6shZWxF9e04_keB518cG/s320/Tornado+003.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120900973234854402" /></a>In this, it is often entertaining to pick up a variety of international sources, which gives an added dimension to the post, allowing you to compare and contrast the different national viewpoints on an issue. Also, lack of comment is worthy of comment. If the media in some countries get excited about an issue which is ignored in one or more others, that itself is noteworthy.<br /><br />The "compare and contrast" technique also applies to domestic reporting. If your trawl spans Left and Right wing media, there can very often be considerable variance in the way an issue is reported - not forgetting editorials and commentators' input, which adds yet further variety. Commenting on discrepancies adds an extra dimension to a post.<br /><br />Then, of course, there are factual discrepancies. Different reports may be at odds with each other, and picking up these differences is a source of endless interest – and entertainment – especially if you can verify certain facts from other sources, and suggest that the reporting of facts is wrong.<br /><br />The idea of checking other sources can also add value. All too often, the media will publicise a report or other document, but will provide few details of it. You can provide a link to it, allowing your readers easy access to the original, making it easier for them to consult the source data.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUHpPenwTT7Fnlad92WYX8xSXRu0X7Lc0g_kpoa9JsTaizFG4FNrmTP_35pagtwF0FklO2qDnP_JuXNOuXRS25ycpZFJigU9xzTniIUN7Y7eONcBUrS9Ra09KVn5B4s1ZROTkEZEU-0zN1/s1600-h/Tel+leader.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUHpPenwTT7Fnlad92WYX8xSXRu0X7Lc0g_kpoa9JsTaizFG4FNrmTP_35pagtwF0FklO2qDnP_JuXNOuXRS25ycpZFJigU9xzTniIUN7Y7eONcBUrS9Ra09KVn5B4s1ZROTkEZEU-0zN1/s320/Tel+leader.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120897837908728306" /></a>And, of course, you can compare the media reports with the actual original source(s), noting "spin", omissions or skewed emphasis. Most likely, journalists will not have read the documents and be relying on press handouts, or agency reports. You can often provide more detail, or a more balanced account of what a report is really saying.<br /><br />Staying with the "compare and contrast" technique, this can also be applied retrospectively. Contemporary reports can often be illuminated by a quick search of the archives, to find out what other – or the same – journalists (or even your own posts) were saying months, or even years ago. Contradictions, or certain predictions which turn out to be completely wrong, are all grist to the mill.<br /><br />Then there is the personal observation. Many bloggers will know something of the subjects of which they are writing. Many will be better informed and most will be free from the editorial constraints which often dictate a particular "line". That gives the opportunity to interject comment, based on an analysis of the material, which adds yet another dimension to the post.<br /><br />However, comment alone is rarely of any value. The "man in pub" talk is dreary and detracts from the post. Conclusions should, therefore, be based on the evidence you bring to the post, bearing in mind that you are free to trawl widely to bring up details which the pieces you are reviewing do not.<br /><br />The end result, using any or all of these techniques, will we very different from the original piece which caught your interest. It will be, in its own right, an original work. And, if it does pass that crucial test – of providing "added value" – it will be worth reading.<br /><br />Of course, it will be even more so if it is <a href="http://umbrellog3.blogspot.com/2007/09/good-blogkeeping.html" target="_blank">well illustrated</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5164" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02561483930556493363noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-16588410684629186482007-10-12T18:00:00.000+01:002007-10-12T18:10:10.291+01:00Hooray for the Nobel Peace Prize<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzl_Y9H1mvYHToKibYc12wT-jBVlbPCgR1PbQpHWxEfheC6-n_E_ApeWfRQ6w4zgfKcF7PBZzK7NuI0YzNF-0s13qfugnvm2kSbpqj7VwtndqYSfyYnn1y6ssjlATLGDINSuDpNk1UfNc/s1600-h/Al+Gore.02.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120497474567540818" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzl_Y9H1mvYHToKibYc12wT-jBVlbPCgR1PbQpHWxEfheC6-n_E_ApeWfRQ6w4zgfKcF7PBZzK7NuI0YzNF-0s13qfugnvm2kSbpqj7VwtndqYSfyYnn1y6ssjlATLGDINSuDpNk1UfNc/s320/Al+Gore.02.jpg" border="0" /></a>Yet again our candidate, the USMC, has been slighted by the Oslo Nobel Peace Prize Committee. I imagine by now those marines must be rather pleased. Imagine if they were given the prize – there they would be in the same category as the International Atomic Energy Agency (last seen still pleading with the world to be nice to the Mad Mullahs and even Madder President of Iran), Jimmy Carter (easily the least successful and most unpleasant American President of the twentieth century) and the late unlamented kleptocrat and tyrant, Chairman Yasser Arafat. I forget the others.<br /><br />As it happens I am absolutely delighted that Al Gore and the much derided by all except the MMGW fruitcakes IPCC were given the Nobel Peace Prize. It is about as ludicrous a situation as anyone can imagine and makes an even greater mockery of it than any past judgement may have done.<br /><br />Speaking of judgement, we had <a href="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/corporate_law/article2633838.ece">the one</a> in the High Court. In his ruling Mr Justice Burton identified nine separate <strike>hysterical outbursts</strike> truths in Al Gore’s film, which were, in fact, significant errors and had arisen in “the context of alarmism and exaggeration”. Just the man to whom a Nobel Prize should be given. The <em>Times</em> article I have linked to lists the nine statements and explains what is wrong with them. Hint: they ignore any scientific proof.<br /><br />On <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/10/al_gore_and_the_mission_of_the.html">American Thinker</a> John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute bemoans the fact that by awarding the Peace Prize to Al Gore who fights with all his might against scientific development and increased welfare for humanity (though he has no particular objections to his own increased welfare) the Committee has finally destroyed the vision of Alfred Nobel.<br /><br />This is it, Mr Berlau says, the 105 year old Nobel Prize is finished. Well, not so, say I. Schooled by one of our readers I know that the Peace Prize is a completely separate entity from the rest of the Nobel circus and is awarded by the Norwegian Parliament, whose members clearly have nothing better to do with their time.<br /><br />Looking at the prizes in various sciences I am duly impressed. The recipients do seem to have achieved a great deal and have advanced knowledge and increased humanity’s well-being. Of course, the relevant scientific communities are no doubt arguing bitterly about the laureates but that is part and parcel of academic life. Alfred Nobel’s vision lives on and he had not actually intended there to be a Peace Prize. Presumably, he had a clear idea of how idiotic that idea was.<br /><br />He did, however, intend there to be a Literature Prize, imbued, one assumes, by the early twentieth century idea of the general betterment of the human spirit as well as the human body.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHQ9dhPp9_g1teOlfuUBz3y04FcNsL8i3OGsyGii8hxc6jmaAU7WoLLGizVE7E5IcQDwdkW3K8aSSwD6r9PqvyB7A7xL03txDEYO0gwtsnBKH8ICpannP2s9fWjCkeGcomsHqZdvyDE90/s1600-h/Doris_Lessing.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5120497599121592418" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHQ9dhPp9_g1teOlfuUBz3y04FcNsL8i3OGsyGii8hxc6jmaAU7WoLLGizVE7E5IcQDwdkW3K8aSSwD6r9PqvyB7A7xL03txDEYO0gwtsnBKH8ICpannP2s9fWjCkeGcomsHqZdvyDE90/s320/Doris_Lessing.jpg" border="0" /></a>This one tends to follow buggins’s turn. Last year it was a Turk, Orhan Pamuk, the year before that the egregious Sir Harold Pinter and so on. This year, it is clearly the turn of Africa and African writers.<br /><br />Amazingly, the committee picked one who is worthy of many prizes and who is a genuine rebel against all establishments. I have to declare an interest in that I am an admirer of Doris Lessing’s, having read various books of hers and found them mostly excellent.<br /><br />Ms Lessing is a very unusual person. Brought up in Southern Rhodesia she was banned from there and from South Africa because of her outspokenness about the white community and the treatment of black people.<br /><br />Subsequently she came to Britain and moved far enough left to become a Communist. Her Martha Quest novels trace the political development of an alter ego. She also wrote one of the seminal books of modern feminism: “The Golden Notebook”.<br /><br />However, the Hungarian events of 1956 made her denounce Communism and she has moved steadily further to the right. “The Good Terrorist” shows little sympathy for any left-wing organization from the KGB to ridiculous little communes. Mind you, the police does not come out terribly well either.<br /><br />It seems that the British academic community has never forgiven her for abandoning Marxism and subsequently turning against soi-disant feminists. For these reasons <a href="http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/11/europe/nobel.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert">she appears to be more popular</a> in the United States than in Britain.<br /><br />Every now and then some unexpected person does receive the Literature Prize (just as the Oscar sometimes goes to an unexpected film like “The Lives of Others”) and Doris Lessing is one of those. I assume next year it will go to a well-known Communist hack of some description in the interests of balance.<br /><br />When it comes to the Peace Prize, on the other hand, there can be no mistakes. After all, nobody could possibly deserve it, anyway, and with this latest award its transformation into the world’s greatest joke has been completed.<br /><br />Don’t believe me? Read some of the comments on this <a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/gores-nobel-the-commentariat-fires-up/">blog</a> and try to keep a straight face.<br /><br />And while we are on the subject of cosmic jokes, will the Venerable Al Gore, Hollywood’s favourite politician, run for President?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=57472#57472"target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-61224005226054157192007-10-10T11:08:00.001+01:002007-10-10T11:19:53.241+01:00Just an observation<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZpW97hDJSt41puqwHb-dB8pTNF1W6aWnr1rqzJ24GwXtp7g470BECbJn7j6KDkUNKWmjZW-u4nJhe34OdN-J_M6bJn3YjU85ceVauTjP79iopSQ1KG0CkebqgjVn1yfi0mdF_Qy8fnnq/s1600-h/hillary110.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5119648182814218306" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDZpW97hDJSt41puqwHb-dB8pTNF1W6aWnr1rqzJ24GwXtp7g470BECbJn7j6KDkUNKWmjZW-u4nJhe34OdN-J_M6bJn3YjU85ceVauTjP79iopSQ1KG0CkebqgjVn1yfi0mdF_Qy8fnnq/s320/hillary110.jpg" border="0" /></a>"The scene was picture perfect and the theme just right," says Toby Harnden in Toledo, Iowa in today's <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/10/whillary110.xml" target="_blank"><em>Telegraph</em></a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">An impromptu stop at a roadside eatery crammed full of everyday folks would help dispel the oft-levelled charge that the former First Lady is a professional politician who does not relate easily to ordinary people. Miss Esterday's plight was just what Mrs Clinton was highlighting on her "Middle Class Express" bus as it sped from town to town past fields of corn and soybeans. Such a spontaneous interaction was the stuff of campaigning among Iowa caucus-goers, who are proud of their brand of face-to-face retail politics.</span></blockquote>Thus the scene painted, and then we learn the truth …<br /><br /><blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Except that virtually every detail of the casual visit had been carefully orchestrated. A team of burly Secret Service men, clad in suits and shades, had driven ahead to carry out a recce. All but two of the customers were Clinton loyalists, including union leaders flown in from New York and Washington, who had been at her previous rally and were travelling on her bus.<br /><br />Mrs Clinton chatted with the supporters, some of whom grinned a little sheepishly at the blatant staging, as the photographers snapped away. Reporters, kept on a separate bus throughout the day, seemed so stunned to be suddenly beside her that the only questions asked were about what she had ordered.</span></blockquote><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLmyLzR5Ar_Y6fG3XkDYKj3g7_wBgTB4la83xZx_GuAD7SZgmEEZ3EE28o0zETKeHfJp3UQ8U1_5eqBTfRyNclrtnZrF06AUehwGjllleKnjMdtzFBqTQEf0iEdmQAPXdsmwYKfr2ccwFW/s1600-h/qana+009.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5119648762634803282" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLmyLzR5Ar_Y6fG3XkDYKj3g7_wBgTB4la83xZx_GuAD7SZgmEEZ3EE28o0zETKeHfJp3UQ8U1_5eqBTfRyNclrtnZrF06AUehwGjllleKnjMdtzFBqTQEf0iEdmQAPXdsmwYKfr2ccwFW/s320/qana+009.jpg" border="0" /></a>So, Mrs Clinton is guilty of blatant stage managing, made even clearer by the paper's choice of photograph, where the caption reads: "Hillary Clinton tucks in at the Maid-Rite luncheonette, where she 'bumped' into a hard-working waitress".<br /><br />And, of course, it is perfectly responsible reporting to point this out. People who stage-manage events, especially when they are seeking to influence public opinion, should not be allowed to carry out their deed without this being pointed out to the public they are seeking to influence.<br /><br />So why didn't the <em>Telegraph</em> point out – together with the rest of the media – how the "rescue" at <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/corruption-of-media.html" target="_blank">Qana last year</a> had been so obviously and egregiously stage-managed? Or is there one rule for the United States and another for the Middle East?<br /><br />Don't answer that!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5136" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Richardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02561483930556493363noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-10633233119772382582007-10-08T17:22:00.000+01:002007-10-08T17:34:08.906+01:00News from the Goracle camp<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcoCqi5nupRoFqpLQQCXYzPE9Np5i8l-OE0TPXTs3P2Q2sUwS_0mZ3IaxxS7PMDbU4CW6LUtLuufZgA_5k8mx-dRSnhbk58Kg7FsqN_5Xpw328txverLWXyQU9UNHsOLJpkTj_ShekqMw/s1600-h/Al+Gore.02.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcoCqi5nupRoFqpLQQCXYzPE9Np5i8l-OE0TPXTs3P2Q2sUwS_0mZ3IaxxS7PMDbU4CW6LUtLuufZgA_5k8mx-dRSnhbk58Kg7FsqN_5Xpw328txverLWXyQU9UNHsOLJpkTj_ShekqMw/s320/Al+Gore.02.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5119004037129310130" /></a>Well, the biggest news, run in the <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2603982.ece">Sunday Times</a> and several other media outlets around the world is that Al Gore is tipped to win the Nobel Peace Prize, an event that will finally destroy whatever miniscule credibility that particular distinction ever had.<br /><br />Should he be awarded the coveted (not!) prize there will be more pressure on him to make an attempt for the Democratic nomination next year. One imagines Hillary Clinton views that one with mixed feelings at best. It is not that she is not smarter than the Goracle as she is smarter than Barack Obama and John Edwards (though not, perhaps, John Edwards’s hair). She is.<br /><br />Gore will, on the other hand create an unholy alliance (in Hillary’s eyes) of the nutroots, at present unimportant enough in her opinion for her to disregard them, and of the anyone-but-Hillary tendency in the Democratic Party. He might just get that nomination if he runs.<br /><br />When this blog <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/02/guess-who-has-been-nominated-for-peace.html">first mentioned</a> that the Goracle had been nominated for the Peace Prize, we did quote yet again the official citation for it. It is supposed to go to<blockquote>the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity among nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.</blockquote>Errm, how does this apply to the Venerable Al Gore? But then, how does this apply to most past recipients of the Peace Prize. The only organization that fully deserves it, <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2005/08/peace-in-our-time-not.html">as we have pointed out before</a>, is the United States Marine Corps (we can have the US army the following year) who actually achieved a great deal of the citation though I have never heard of that fine body of men and women promoting peace congresses.<br /><br />There is a real problem with that Prize (remember <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/10/entertainment-from-norway.html">the shenanigans</a> last year?) and that is its inherent impossibility. One can undoubtedly argue about the scientific achievements of the winners in the various categories (not that I would dare) but one can be sure that these achievements exist. Even in economics one can point to a body of writing or a theory or two, more controversial though these might be. Literature? Ah well, least said, soonest mended.<br /><br />But Peace Prize? How much peace has there been in the world since 1901? I suppose, rather a large number of peace congresses has been held and promoted, thought not, as it happens, by the Venerable Al Gore.<br /><br />Meanwhile, closer home, there have been developments in the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/20/nlaw120.xml">case</a> Stewart Dimmock brought against the government, which decided to send a copy of that curious film, described as a documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” to every secondary school in the country. Oh yes, we are paying for this.<br /><br />It is rather interesting to see how the <a href="http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Stewart+Dimmock">media round the world</a> handled the High Court decision. Surprisingly (or not) there seems to have been as much interest across the Pond as in Britain with only the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/09/28/eagore128.xml">Daily Telegraph</a>, the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7025119.stm">BBC</a>, <a href="http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1579682007">The Scotsman</a> and <a href="http://www.kentnews.co.uk/kent-news/Rules-changed-on-showing-climate-change-film-newsinkent5607.aspx">Kent News</a> covering the story. Of these, the BBC and The Scotsman concentrated on the fact that the bid to prevent the film from being shown failed. Take that, you horrible sceptic.<br /><br />American outlets produced much more up-to-date and outspoken accounts, concentrating on the fact that the High Court laid down guidance as to the circumstances in which the film can be shown.<br /><br />I particularly liked this headline <a href="http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/10/04/britain-to-give-gore-film-a-âbsâ-rating/">Men’s News Daily</a> in California: “Britain to give Gore film a ‘BS’ rating”. <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,299268,00.html">Fox News</a> quoted Mr Justice Burton as saying that the film did promote “partisan political views”.<br /><br />In fact, Stewart Dimmock has become something of a hero in the United States to bloggers. Here is Oregon Guy <a href="http://oregonguythinks.blogspot.com/2007/10/today-is-stewart-dimmock-day.html">reporting</a> on “Stewart Dimmock day”.<br /><br />It would seem that this is, indeed, <a href="http://www.chronline.com/main.asp?SectionID=16&SubSectionID=101&ArticleID=41956&TM=44199.62">a partial victory</a>. The film will be shown but teachers are supposed to make it clear that this is partial, biased and partisan. Presumably, parents can encourage schools to show the Channel 4 film, which showed certain inconvenient truths about the whole man-made-global-warming industry. Full ruling is expected later this week.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=57281#57281"target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-63909460774607450802007-10-07T00:12:00.000+01:002007-10-07T00:21:40.587+01:00Do they know they are lying?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiccsmkrkevWdqOVEl6sBstq6oK-wrO6jVwZKKMIwfZm6wg5LmsQB9sGb0sMQ922P7ucIDxjGvDBv0Gj8IUaaoaesvZZW2RNoyv2_hHvcIxy_WTZnWl2wjQ49sejBlgHeXFV2RhgdtERpQ/s1600-h/France2.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118366719817158498" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiccsmkrkevWdqOVEl6sBstq6oK-wrO6jVwZKKMIwfZm6wg5LmsQB9sGb0sMQ922P7ucIDxjGvDBv0Gj8IUaaoaesvZZW2RNoyv2_hHvcIxy_WTZnWl2wjQ49sejBlgHeXFV2RhgdtERpQ/s320/France2.JPG" border="0" /></a>One way or another we have written a great deal about the misleading nature of the MSM, whether it be my co-editor’s <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/corruption-of-media.html">extraordinary unravelling</a> of the Qana story or my own slightly more historic <a href="http://eureferendum2.blogspot.com/2007/02/big-lie-or-many-small-lies.html">discussion</a> of the small lies that triumphed over the big lie.<br /><br />It is for that reason that we, too, have followed the Mohammed Al-Dura story, which is finally beginning to break, what with Israel <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/10/its-official.html">announcing</a> that the scenes were clearly staged and <a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/10/they-will-comply-it-seems.html">the French court ordering France2</a> to produce the raw footage.<br /><br />(As a matter of fact, the more I look even at that iconic picture the more I wonder about it. Would a father not hide the child behind him to protect him from the supposed bullets? But that’s another discussion.)<br /><br />ShrinkWrapped, a blog with whom we have formed a mutual admiration society, takes up <a href="http://shrinkwrapped.blogs.com/blog/2007/10/the-persistence.html#more">the story</a> precisely from the point of view of why the MSM refuses to look at the truth. There are one or two aspects of the posting that I find a little hard to agree with. That story about experiments on kittens reminds me just a little too strongly about Pavlov’s dogs and the Soviet conclusions that were drawn from their behaviour. (I presume there was a point to the experiment.)<br /><br />I find it a little harder to assume good will on the part of the MSM as ShrinkWrapped seems to. <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">Our Media are our eyes on the world. It is problematic but unavoidable that the unconscious biases of the reporters will effect how their stories are presented, and more importantly, what stories are not presented. The recognition that the al-Dura blood libel was a conscious deception of Western dupes, masquerading as men of integrity, is a potential paradigm shattering event.<br /><br />The MSM have seen their credibility slowly erode for many years now. The mix of distortions, occasional overt lies, and neglect that have been increasingly exposed by the new media, all have served to hollow out the support for the MSM as people who do not have an emotional investment in the MSM are unable to avoid recognizing just how slanted the "news" has become.</span></blockquote>Hmm, yes, but really, this is not such a new idea. Looking back on the media’s role in the Vietnam debacle, I would say that few journalists are quite the innocent, well-meaning dupes that one would like to think them to be.<br /><br />The point about the role of the new media is accurate enough. Not for one moment would I suggest that the new media of which we are part, is in any way perfect. There are many mistake, deliberate misunderstandings and misleading statements. But, in a way, its importance is that it provides competition and reveals the obvious fact that the MSM, by and large, has its own agenda and in the war that we are fighting, that agenda is not necessarily the same as ours.<br /><br />The blog refers back to yesterday’s <a href="http://www.theaugeanstables.com/2007/10/05/fallows-comments-on-al-durah-insights-into-why-the-story-has-taken-so-long-to-break/">posting</a> on Augean Stables, whose author, Richard Landes has led the campaign to uncover the truth about the Al-Dura story. In it, Professor Landes describes a discussion he had with a “well-meaning” and, in his opinion, entirely honourable journalist James Fallows, who, despite being badgered by Palestinian and pro-Palestinian organizations as well as, probably, his own colleagues, eventually accepted by looking carefully at the pictures and tapes that the IDF could not have shot the boy.<br /><br />What he would not and could not even countenance was the obvious second point, which is that this was a record that was carefully staged in order to discredit Israel and justify the continuing intifada with all its horrors (mostly for the Palestinians). I don’t know Mr Fallows and cannot, therefore, comment but he sounds to me no different from the people who almost literally stopped their ears against the truth about Communist regimes because they did not want to know or admit.<br /><br />One final point: looking at the stories about fraudulent reporting from Iraq and remembering the “reporting” from Vietnam that convinced the world of America losing Tet, I am not too impressed by the idea that European journalists are more cynical or agenda-driven than American ones. Six of one and half-a-dozen the other, in my opinion.<br /><br />And if they are, where does that get us? They are “more likely to deny the evidence rather than wink an eye and make an honest, off the record comment”. Not for the first time I find myself siding with the cynic, who might create less damage by making that honest, off the record comment.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=57229#57229"target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-71994398308732502652007-10-04T23:43:00.000+01:002007-10-05T00:27:29.528+01:00The Secret Art of Cat Herding<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/images/herding%20cats.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px;" src="http://blogs.zdnet.com/images/herding%20cats.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>As we are developing Umbrella Blog we are taking on a number of new members. Naturally this is a case of herding cats. So in the interests of saving everyone's time I'm going to clarify the deal should you wish to join.<br /><br />Firstly, deciding to join:<br /><br />You have two options to get the ball rolling. You can either invite us to join your blog via the blogger admin panel or just give us your logon details. We promise we wont abuse access to your blog; frankly we don't have time even if we wanted to. We may pop in to correct your spelling or maybe add a picture if you have overlooked it but other than that you have complete editorial control.<br /><br />We have gone to great effort to be up front about all of this. What you see is what you get. We want a uniform image and we want our logo displayed somewhere visible at the top. We get hits, you get hits - that's how it works. It's not up for debate.<br /><br />We are going for a standard so there is instant brand recognition and we have decided that we are not going to deviate because it's time consuming, undesirable and for me... very boring. We have some exceptions for those who are polite and come forward with helpful suggestions but generally speaking we want a uniform appearance.<br /><br />When you join you get one of our rather cool banners and a "panel" that will appear on the top of your blog. It would be helpful to us if you have preferences as to its appearance. It would help if you either round up some images you want us to use or at least outline five basic concepts that I can use in the design. I don't get it right every time but if you leave me guessing, the chances of it coming out wrong are increased.<br /><br />Again, politeness and co-operation generally brings about prompt and helpful service from us. We're doing this for the good of the blogosphere and we're not making any money doing it at this time. Keep that in mind. You may be a superstar blogger but we have no time for <em>prima donnas</em>. You can see what we're offering so think about joining before you contact us and it will save everyone's time. You're either on board or not. It might be good to have you but if we can't bring you on board without a fuss then we have a backlog of people we can.<br /><br />We are somewhat puzzled by some of the attitudes we have encountered so far and we're trying very hard not to take it personally. The majority have been enthusiastic and encouraging which gives us the energy to make this work. That's what we need more of. Whingers and naysayers be damned. Or at least save it for your posts where it might actually do some good.<br /><br />Our preferences:<br /><br />We ask that your posts are topical or at least thoughtful.<br />Illustrate them with pictures and do it properly.<br />Make sure your links are properly linked and not long URL's.<br />Keep your sidebar tidy and up to date.<br /><br />That is all.Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-82068537620234302792007-10-02T17:48:00.000+01:002007-10-02T17:55:16.284+01:00The people are pleading with him<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpGVaRn3ZnN12Nqs23-pdykJZDcD2YvJJ3oPzSgom5j-PGblV1JfKhZGwTGNYMSSsNEKrm66Mt2L5q41PQRvY-F9YDebdLG-tTX6w1orJCbDf7ZGqHxUd2ZpuC9nFjOtTRFE9p0zGfcV8/s1600-h/Putin_United_Russia.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116782718698524194" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpGVaRn3ZnN12Nqs23-pdykJZDcD2YvJJ3oPzSgom5j-PGblV1JfKhZGwTGNYMSSsNEKrm66Mt2L5q41PQRvY-F9YDebdLG-tTX6w1orJCbDf7ZGqHxUd2ZpuC9nFjOtTRFE9p0zGfcV8/s320/Putin_United_Russia.jpg" border="0" /></a>The famous last line of Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov” is a stage direction: “The people are silent”. They remain silent in response to the news that Boris’s children have been found dead (by their killers, as everyone knows) and a new “Tsar” Dmitry is being proclaimed.<br /><br />However, the people of Russia have played other parts in the country’s history. Not infrequently they have processed to the place where a ruler or a would-be ruler is brooding on the iniquities of his enemies, to plead that he should accept power or return to it.<br /><br />I really hate saying I told you so, but I did tell you so on numerous occasions. Sooner or later the people will plead with Putin to remain in power. <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/putins-naked-ambition-laid-bare-at-last/2007/10/02/1191091114325.html">They did so</a>, individually and en masse at the United Russia Congress.<br /><br />President Putin graciously agreed to be the leading name on its list for December’s Duma elections, which means that barring severe misadventure, he will be the country’s Prime Minister.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=11869037">Today</a> the General Council of the United Russia Party has proposed Vladimir Putin to be the sole leading candidate and draft lists have been distributed. I’d like to see the person who will suggest any alteration to that draft.<br /><br />Putin’s <a href="http://www.er.ru/news.html?id=124221">own speech</a> [link in Russian] was brief and to the point. In no circumstances must the country return to the situation seven or eight years ago and the present political system must be continued. Therefore, he is ready to go on serving the country, possibly as Prime Minister. <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">For me to head the Government is a highly realistic proposition though it is a little early to think about that because it requires two essential conditions; firstly “United Russia” has to win the elections on December 2 of this year; and secondly the country must elect as its President a man who is decent, businesslike, effective and modern in his outlook, with whom it will be possible to work. [my translation]</span></blockquote>An interesting way of putting it. The first condition is a joke – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Russia">United Russia </a>is not about to lose the Duma elections or even find itself in a position of having to form a coalition. If another party of a similar hue does well, it will simply be absorbed into Boris Gryzlov’s group.<br /><br />The comment about the putative President is fascinating in that Putin does not even pretend any longer that there is any semblance of democracy in the country he has led for the last eight years. He will decide who will be the Presidential candidate to take over from him and will become Prime Minister to ensure that matters are conducted satisfactorily.<br /><br />There are one or two questions one cannot help asking. First of all, what will happen in the overlapping period? The presidential election will be next March; the Duma will be elected this December. If Putin becomes Prime Minister in December he will have to make someone acting President and one must assume that it will be the person who will have his special blessing.<br /><br /><a href="http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/09/reading-runes.html">Will it be</a> the new Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov or one of the Deputies, Sergei Ivanov or Dmitry Medvedev? And will any of them, particularly the last two, who do have their own power bases, agree to be ciphers while Putin continues to rule in another capacity?<br /><br />Then there is the inevitable question as to why is Putin so anxious to stay in power. Of course, we all know that power tends to corrupt and it is a drug that people get addicted to very quickly. But one cannot help wondering what else is eating him.<br /><br />It was generally assumed that when Putin became Yeltsin’s successor a deal was done, whereby the President and his family as well as the immediate entourage would not be touched. Putin kept to the supposed agreement – he went after the oligarchs but only the ones who opposed him politically and when he wanted to install his own people. Yeltsin and his friends and relations were left alone.<br /><br />Does Putin now have any doubts about being able to do a similar deal with his successor? Or has the court become so big that he has to be there to protect them all?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=57032#57032"target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-84915976381699284892007-10-01T00:00:00.000+01:002007-10-01T00:55:20.326+01:00A memo has surfaced<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaoWgnEWFyuWcB_hwxf88WVSsE4hlZEAQ8MlRF9__8Bj6qj5zcYBDRdmXhC05Uu3BgH9Qh6wzEpyYyNqyZve9IYKmZYjk4dhMA99nfPtmxjJBu7OeCg0zgZ8MbQ6I-YGelPl_Cn9XqYzI/s1600-h/Bush_Aznar.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5116136940300799458" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaoWgnEWFyuWcB_hwxf88WVSsE4hlZEAQ8MlRF9__8Bj6qj5zcYBDRdmXhC05Uu3BgH9Qh6wzEpyYyNqyZve9IYKmZYjk4dhMA99nfPtmxjJBu7OeCg0zgZ8MbQ6I-YGelPl_Cn9XqYzI/s320/Bush_Aznar.JPG" border="0" /></a>The newspaper <em>El País</em>, which is definitely anti-Bush, anti-American (unless we are talking Al Gore or John Kerry) and anti-Aznar, has produced a “scoop” though as is the nature of many scoops, its origin may not lie too far away from the Zapatero government.<br /><br />The scoop is <a href="http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Llego/momento/deshacerse/Sadam/elpepunac/20070926elpepinac_1/Te">the transcript of a memo</a> [link in Spanish] of a private conversation between President Bush and Prime Minister Aznar in 2003. Though the text is in Spanish, not a particularly little known language, the only translation there was for a while was a <a href="http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003646639">machine made one</a>, published by Editor and Publisher. Jose Guardia of Pajamas Media <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/09/bush_aznar_memo.php">says it is atrocious</a> and I can well believe it, having seen machine translations before.<br /><br />Nevertheless, it does seem to be the one used by <a href="http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3653848&page=1">those who reported the story</a>.<br /><br />There is now no need to read the machine translation as Mr Guardia has provided <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/09/bush_aznar_memo.php">an accurate one</a> of his own. And a very interesting document it is, too, providing a good deal of enlightenment about the discussions before the second UN resolution.<br /><br />The most interesting, almost throw-away line in it is a reference to Egyptian attempts to intervene. Bush told Aznar among other matters: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;">The Egyptians are talking with Saddam Hussein. It seems he has hinted he’d be willing to leave if he’s allowed to take 1 billion dollars and all the information on WMDs.</span></blockquote>How’s that again? Information on WMDs? That is what he hinted to the Egyptians, specifically to Hosni Mubarak, who passed it on to the Americans? Errrm, you mean there were WMDs or plans for them? Surely not. We know that Bush lied and people died. (Oh, and while we are on the subject, what did the Israelis bomb in Syria?)<br /><br />There is a great deal of discussion between Bush, Aznar and Condoleezza Rice about the best way of getting the second resolution through and how to approach various countries to get their vote, with Bush somewhat understandably pawing the ground and Aznar asking him to be patient.<br /><br />Bush also shows himself anxious to avoid war (well, they all do because contrary to the BDS sufferers no sane human being actually likes war) but says that Saddam can have no guarantees if he goes into exile: <blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>Bush</strong>: No guarantees. He’s a thief, a terrorist, a war criminal. Compared to Saddam, Milosevic would be a Mother Teresa. When we go in, we are going to discover many more crimes, and we’ll take him to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Saddam Hussein believes he has escaped. He thinks that France and Germany have stopped the process of his prosecution. He also thinks that last week’s anti-war demonstrations [Saturday, February 15] protect him. And he believes I’m weakened. But people around him know that things are totally different. They know their future is in exile or in a coffin. This is why it’s so important to keep the pressure up. Ghaddafi is indirectly telling us that this is the only thing that can finish him. Saddam’s only strategy is delay, delay, delay.</span></blockquote>Not an inaccurate analysis. It would appear that President Bush is not the idiot he is made out by the sophisticated Europeans (though not Aznar) who, with their convoluted dealings merely encouraged Saddam to hold out for far too long.<br /><br />Read the whole piece. It is worth it.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5059" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Helenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13799545178433498944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-7765679594598761922007-09-28T23:16:00.001+01:002007-09-28T23:52:06.893+01:00Too little, too late and I still don't trust him<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.bt.no/multimedia/archive/00226/BTimg_LON54D_BRITAI_226819e.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://www.bt.no/multimedia/archive/00226/BTimg_LON54D_BRITAI_226819e.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>I hate to begin a blog post with the words "The Telegraph reports today..." but there it is.<br /><br />The Telegraph (disgusting spun rag that it is) reports today that the Tories are to return to traditional tory values by decree of the Boy King. The headline brought a smile and my immediate thoughts were "he-he, we won". We as in all of us who answered the Conservative Home questionnaire and marked Cameron down. We as in those who wasted our time responding to the "Have your say" sections on the Telegraph and repeatedly bombarded the comments on Tory Diary with our dissatisfaction at Cameron's "ideas". Finally, his media spiv focus groups have woken up to the fact there is a debate going on without them.<br /><br />So we got what we shouted for. A Conservative Party leader who campaigns on Conservative values. If it's true. But this does raise some serious questions as to whether we can trust the Tories. A question which has plagued the Tories since 1997. What everyone is thinking is "So much for conviction politics". Blair went whichever way the wind blows and the last thing we want or need is another Prime minister who chases popularity.<br /><br />It is for this reason I'd wager the Tories are being hammered in the polls. Not only has Cameron turned his back on Conservatives, he has also turned his back on those he has been wooing for the last year at least. So what has it all been for?<br /><br />However, we now have it set in stone that Cameron has no conviction and cannot be trusted. He was arrogant to ignore what we were saying and now he's been forced to admit he was utterly wrong for the sake of the party. All good lessons. But a little late in the game for such epiphanies.<br /><br />Two years ago might have been helpful. Now it's just treading water so that the next election defeat will not be the catastrophe many Tories expect it to be.<br />The Cameron project has been an utter waste of time. Whichever way we look at it we still have another five years of socialism to suffer.<br /><br />One can only hope the Tories will choose wisely next time and that there is still a real Conservative in their ranks who will step up to the plate when the time comes.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5044" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3819549152179066548.post-76888047753157840372007-09-28T17:52:00.000+01:002007-10-13T20:50:22.132+01:00Good Blogkeeping<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjHRKDl5v2dXPx9zgWbYX2lvpxs7Wtbtgt9YPkr5xWyZGBRtdncIKUFy7LeuoQFbPE4HWMogzpFwppvhbotX_5y7pb1PK6pB5Ym_TBCRnIeo6jdV57BHbQBdrWbnHz1Q0hLXtN1_qtK1BR/s1600-h/bronte.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjHRKDl5v2dXPx9zgWbYX2lvpxs7Wtbtgt9YPkr5xWyZGBRtdncIKUFy7LeuoQFbPE4HWMogzpFwppvhbotX_5y7pb1PK6pB5Ym_TBCRnIeo6jdV57BHbQBdrWbnHz1Q0hLXtN1_qtK1BR/s320/bronte.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115299512451517170" /></a>The following post is complete nonsense. But, it serves to demonstrate how varied photographs, properly scaled and positioned can entice a reader to continue reading. It will also show how to overcome bloggers block. Politics is everywhere if you look for it. All these photos were taken in a one hour drive and I do not, repeat DO NOT, live in an interesting area. We'll look at the themes we can explore with them. It's also an excuse to publish some stock photos I presently have no use for but find somehow appealing.<br /><br />Anyways, on with the post. One of my regular jaunts into the local countryside leads me to one of the most awesome spots in the whole of the Pennines (pictured). Bronte Country. How anyone saw fit to site a wind farm here is quite beyond me. One wonders if anyone got a say in it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbuQhjMv3p2cZNmUUNwgAEyYRKlbgSlWjoQgm1LIaeBzGV61SorqhKxSH3r64fsJSu_m0wBTu6dpf7zYRWQuUkvkunCUDWXMUcSrJnFsLa1-9IkUPdynsN0x9QY18qcZIu2hpkPz5poSsg/s1600-h/wind.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbuQhjMv3p2cZNmUUNwgAEyYRKlbgSlWjoQgm1LIaeBzGV61SorqhKxSH3r64fsJSu_m0wBTu6dpf7zYRWQuUkvkunCUDWXMUcSrJnFsLa1-9IkUPdynsN0x9QY18qcZIu2hpkPz5poSsg/s320/wind.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115300307020466946" /></a>They are visible for 30 miles on the tops of Yorkshire. Whoever asked for them?<br /><br />Speaking of vandalising the countryside, the site is now a favoured fly tipping spot. One is tempted to blame the Waste Framework Directive but lets face it, it's pure laziness. There's really nothing stopping anyone going to a household waste dump with this kind of garbage. I find it curious that anyone would drive out into the middle of the moors to get rid of junk when there are so many household waste sites available these days. Theres a story in that somewhere.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYbuB1v0caO0kgPco7W8oaEYXx3KyTJtdCH2vhz8LTI7wtEEmkuZNeB09IXiztviOsuk5mUTFjPpo-5zmTPUlKktweA9U7IN1h9t179eTqtBxr9-rh-Tlfe1-CLNNEADqN7DgqevgcufKv/s1600-h/flytip2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYbuB1v0caO0kgPco7W8oaEYXx3KyTJtdCH2vhz8LTI7wtEEmkuZNeB09IXiztviOsuk5mUTFjPpo-5zmTPUlKktweA9U7IN1h9t179eTqtBxr9-rh-Tlfe1-CLNNEADqN7DgqevgcufKv/s320/flytip2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115300684977589010" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFPf4nL0CN-4ImEcbdgJ1eEpXSYOPCS3VxZiU4yXza9fR6fkkhF0yye9MwPR7-lNZsLCxBseIbWSCT5Z-b06MwM-a6MHU8Hn5s38qwq2OLcmDafEw98ZKysffVYtWb6ndqvhYxrmDF8Oe/s1600-h/crackhouse.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmFPf4nL0CN-4ImEcbdgJ1eEpXSYOPCS3VxZiU4yXza9fR6fkkhF0yye9MwPR7-lNZsLCxBseIbWSCT5Z-b06MwM-a6MHU8Hn5s38qwq2OLcmDafEw98ZKysffVYtWb6ndqvhYxrmDF8Oe/s320/crackhouse.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115304580512926498" /></a>Elsewhere, Special thanks to Bradford Council for letting the whole world know that my neighbourhood more crackdens than dentists. One wonders how much that billboard poster cost, who is paying for it and whether they could have afforded a man to clean up the fly tipping had they not used it for that. In fact I could go on quite a spree photographing local authority adverts. Perhaps the ONS knows how much we are spending on community advertising. There's a blog in itself.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-xOplZgi0fqKW95Znr6AiF1SfqDaa9ALGcoSci-TM_mZ5-Ra9BliOEBgU8KDEBV7jWdaMgt8_I-h1_kB23lgAfpHQOZLewovFEF7yXsgvdg-V2aTV9numeuS3UJhUemRjtC3lTn82xY2R/s1600-h/dentist.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-xOplZgi0fqKW95Znr6AiF1SfqDaa9ALGcoSci-TM_mZ5-Ra9BliOEBgU8KDEBV7jWdaMgt8_I-h1_kB23lgAfpHQOZLewovFEF7yXsgvdg-V2aTV9numeuS3UJhUemRjtC3lTn82xY2R/s320/dentist.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115310593467140914" /></a>Speaking of dentists, we can all have a good rant on the impossibility of finding one on the NHS even though we've paid for it. And what better illustration could I ask than this one? Going by the brand new BMW and Aston Martin sat outside I would say that there's not much to be said for doing NHS work. There's a story.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHk_HBXUCw65HkzSSF28gnTBf9GWbaGLpaFS9BHfE26nBJfBE-UOQF8TIcUdgPyceQi2jPRq6l5CdajiN05UaIdxzzUL0TQthHTRLUKV9ZCpYCVdcMSBKoc3nEZoYvKXQvWla2AW3ie4FU/s1600-h/tractor.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHk_HBXUCw65HkzSSF28gnTBf9GWbaGLpaFS9BHfE26nBJfBE-UOQF8TIcUdgPyceQi2jPRq6l5CdajiN05UaIdxzzUL0TQthHTRLUKV9ZCpYCVdcMSBKoc3nEZoYvKXQvWla2AW3ie4FU/s200/tractor.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115312032281185090" /></a>Of course because it's a portrait picture it means I have to rant a bit more just to fill space. So here I'm going to include a very small picture of a rather sweet little tractor.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih5mca4xHdMfc_r-l6ioOhnSWHbFib9rdgiV21cus9uch31f_FhI8l9cLUdnA-Nra_z-RsY2q7_VoMJOOl0425tlB31maU-LVbnlJE5cGGeyLA4mY13tN04M05dbIRpR9kraQ9h2ivhQNZ/s1600-h/police.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih5mca4xHdMfc_r-l6ioOhnSWHbFib9rdgiV21cus9uch31f_FhI8l9cLUdnA-Nra_z-RsY2q7_VoMJOOl0425tlB31maU-LVbnlJE5cGGeyLA4mY13tN04M05dbIRpR9kraQ9h2ivhQNZ/s320/police.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115312951404186450" /></a>Also, you can never go wrong with a picture of a police car. This one next to an ambulance is a mega bonus. <br /><br />Perhaps someone has been a victim of the guns that are sold round the back lane and tested on Highways Agency property. OK so this photo is a total fluke and you probably have to live in Birmingham to find this sort of thing on a regular basis.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij-OK-WCDCioGMuzpgcgeo5H_MeCadXZ4HN7cBNPV5OftRgydgDXfZHajqsddYHkoBkDEnoUuQxNtvVnEQphaw0cu1g23cmNDTPO4hQq97qR-GVMlktfvff2moAkua2PZH-fFk9cUz5K50/s1600-h/30.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij-OK-WCDCioGMuzpgcgeo5H_MeCadXZ4HN7cBNPV5OftRgydgDXfZHajqsddYHkoBkDEnoUuQxNtvVnEQphaw0cu1g23cmNDTPO4hQq97qR-GVMlktfvff2moAkua2PZH-fFk9cUz5K50/s320/30.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5115313694433528674" /></a>So if I can find all this in just an hours drive in BRADFORD... what's your excuse?<br /><br />I'm sure everyone reading this lives somewhere more interesting than West Yorkshire. Very often your local issues are national issues and there are plenty of them if you open your eyes to them.<br /><br />See. Plenty of politics, a long post with pictures, we're this far down the page, and you're still reading this rubbish. I rest my case.... Well, almost. A bit more text will fill up the page to stop images hanging over the end of the post, and bring the piece to a neat conclusion. From a presentational point of view, there are few things worse then the text stopping short of an illustration. Those without Photoshop may benefit from this <a href="http://www.shrinkpictures.com/">superb little site</a> for resizing images.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.eureferendum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5043" target="_blank">COMMENT THREAD</a>Pete Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04172420184509249126noreply@blogger.com