Get Behind the Mule

Rock'n'roll...

2008-06-06T20:09:00.002+01:00

Today I descended back into the mire where the unwashed masses loiter outside KFC. My ccontract has not been renewed. Not quite terminated, perhaps, but kneecapped. So it's either lots of time for blogging until the internet connection gets cut off, followed by scrounging for change for a warming brew at Vernon's Tea Rooms........OR............job hunting.

Oh the joy. Since the contents of the heads of my powerful superiors are protected by a powerful mystique, I did not find out until today, three weeks after the closing date for almost all school jobs. That I can't fathom why I couldn't have been privy to a hint a few weeks ago is less a mystery than an indication as to why I am on the low side of the road which divides the management junta from the skivvies.

All of which means it is the dregs of the school jobs, or something else altogether.

Failing that, there is always Vernon's Tea Rooms...

Wedding belles

2008-05-13T19:42:00.004+01:00

Friday was Ben and Kathryn's wedding in St. Newlyn, and a beautiful affair it was too. Lovely to see the Byfield clan, Ed, Sheila and Steve, Sarah and Tania. Thanks to all for a lovely day!
We went to Taunton Vale point to point on the way home, and Sam was converted instantly from animal rights extremist to fully fledged turf lover.

Photos of Isaac's christening

2008-05-06T21:31:00.001+01:00

We are online! And the first thing I have done is put the Christening photos on flickr. click here.

Happy Birthday!

2008-01-29T18:24:00.000Z

...to Dolly Bindi.

Some live quotes from revellers(!)

Bethany: "A joyous occasion."

Samantha: "Dolly daydream."

Dot: "Hang on I'll go and get the books."
"I don't feel a day over 54."

Bethany [in reply] "Well, you're not."

Aristos

2008-01-16T22:51:00.000Z

First, why is Neil 'Toppler' Kinnock's son head of the British Council in Russia, please. Must be talent. Second, why does the Milliband boy think he is well placed to assert [paraphrase] 'all the activities of the British council in Russia are completely legal.' Is he now a fontum iuridicae for Russia? Well, I suppose he probably would be.

Adoptive Darwinism?

2007-12-07T23:26:00.000Z

Louise from Northern Ireland calls Stephen Nolan on five live to talk about this overcrowded planet.

"I've been thinking about adopting. Would I love that child as much as my own flesh and blood? I mean, I'm not ready to have children yet, but I was thinking about this, and I've been talking to friends about it...I was thinking, I mean, people have pets and stuff...I've got a dog myself, which I love nearly like my own child, so I suppose it is possible..."

The Prophetic Teddy

2007-11-29T22:46:00.001Z

Much bloggy hot air on this...I'd have thought if the outlook was forty lashes and a year of porridge, you'd take 15 days in clink and run, wouldn't you?

Meanwhile, Peter Hain tries to get Harriet Harman off the hook by saying he had a dodgy 5k too. (No link yet, even on reuters - I heard it on BBC 5live.) So that's ok, then.

Something that made me laugh

2007-11-26T23:16:00.000Z

Here

Every man is an island

2007-11-25T20:56:00.000Z

The humerous defence against the loss of the personal data of 25,000,000 civvies 'Oh, it was a lone 23 year old lackey making a cock up...and anyway morale is low...and erm...' fails to disguise the fact that significant cracks in the consensus of MPs are becoming apparent. The commons select committee has been told this week that the 'der' should be taken out of the description 'undertrained' for an average minister of the state.

It hardly needs pointing out how extraordinary it is that this 'new' Labour mob maintain quite such a firm grip on power, given that they have spent six years taking away our civil liberties on the pretext that we will be more secure under their protection, while going to ever greater lengths to demonstrate their incompetance.

But given that context, a few clues as to how the past decade will settle into historical context seem to be emerging.

1) The population has become divorced from Westminister to a remarkable extent. This is not, and never has been, political disengagement (fuel strikes, anti-war protests, countryside alliance marches inter alia, and raises the prospect that, if the government goes to lengths to win the next election (more boundary changes, another low turnout...), that the final ousting of them will be through unconventional methods. It is not inconceivable that a single issue public protest could force an unscheduled election, given the vogue of recent years for taking to the streets.

2) Mandleson's ghost has come back to bite Brown. The 'spin' project was an extraordinary short term success. But its effects did not go unnoticed. That interviews on Newsnight and Today are utterly devoid of substance is not because Humphreys and Paxo have totally lost their journalistic bearings. The orthodoxy of spin is total. Journalists no longer waste their time questioning ministers to trap them into spilling the truth. These interviews are no more than a traditional charade. Instead, every utterance from a politician is assumed to be spun. The whole game has become unravelling the spin. Nick Robinson is the new Paxo. This is a dangerous place for journalism to be, but at this moment the analysts seem to be doing a fairly good job. This is not least because the routine of spin has sucked it of any ingenuity. The sort of commitment to PR that made September 11th 'a good day to bury bad news' has been replaced by a workaday evasion by politicians, most of whom are kept in the dark by the fiercely centralised Labour machine. The problem being...

3) Centralised government doesn't work. Time will tell what the alternative will be. It seems at this point inconceivable that an a depoliticised civil service and a strong independent House of Lords could be reconstituted. Without them, central government has failed as an executive, a position the public can afford to accept until the economic doo-doo hits the fan. The winds of change will rise sooner rather than later, and they don't smell too good.

Blogging by proxy

2007-09-24T20:13:00.000+01:00

Well, after not feeling too bright for a while, I have mustered a bit of energy for these fun e-pursuits. But then I used it all up adding grist to Si's mill. So my tupp'ney bit can be seen here and here.

Group-mentality point of reference: anniversaire.

2007-09-11T21:07:00.000+01:00

And yet...mostly quiet on that front. I am still here, you are still there. "Maddy" is still missing. And the site of the twin towers will continue to be "Ground Zero". Until we deal with and move on. Probably not by leaving Basra and pretending everything is OK. Nor by ignoring the death of Jean Charles de Menezes - the most potent symptom of any threat to our 'way of life'.

If the last six years haven't been the not-the-end-of-history (and about this I am almost sure), they may yet have been an ideological trough in England.

[Picture: twin towers as smoking guns]

NB: The west is not a hell of hedonistic excess.

Summer Hiatus over.

2007-09-02T10:21:00.000+01:00

And back to the daily grind tomorrow. The sun is shining. I have serviced my bicycle. Coventry are top of the league. I've got Ben Folds on the radio. But the nights are closing in...

L- l- l- land of the free.

2007-08-18T11:42:00.000+01:00

Just a mundane reminder that the winners write history. Extraordinary story, in a way, though.

Not that things have necessarily changed much...

Little Green

2007-08-16T18:21:00.000+01:00

Amanda is 20 weeks old. She can lift her head, and support her weight on her forearms if she starts from lying on her front. She is too young to be crawling yet. Today she cried for most of the day, in pain because of wind trapped in her chest. Sometimes if I stand up and hold her I can get her to stop crying for a while, but if I change her position even slightly - change the arm supporting her weight, for example - she will start again. Sometimes, if I sit down, and sit her on my lap, facing away from me, she will take one of my fingers and suckle on it. Eventually the lack of milk will frustrate her and she will again begin to cry. I give her a bottle of warm milk. She drinks four fifths of it, and immediately falls asleep, without burping. Ten minutes later, she wakes up in pain, and the whole cycle begins again. With us in the room are six other babies and one other adult - a girl, pale, aged 17 or eighteen. At five o'clock in the afternoon I leave. Amanda has been there since half past six this morning, and will stay until eight o'clock this evening, when her mother will arrive to take her home. This is how she spends every day, apart from Sundays, when she stays at home.

Five blockbusters and a controversy

2007-08-15T17:33:00.000+01:00

In recent days, and indeed nights, I have watched the Xmen triology (excellent blockbusting value); the first two Bourne films (superior spying lark, I can't wait to see Ultimatum; and Black Snake Moan. I would heartily recommend all six to anyone looking for a fun, light movie to while away an evening. They are all well above average. In the case of the two series, I wouldn't want to see any of them without having seen the previous episodes, particularly in the case of Xmen. However, the second Bourne film and second and third Xmen films are that rare breed: sequals just as enjoyable as the original film.

But it is Black Snake Moan that surprised me. It is not excellent. Justin Timberlake is a notable weak link in the otherwise very strong cast. The plot suffers from improbable reactions from some of the characters (which I couldn't go into without giving away bits of the plot). And the ending is unsatisfactory, unless you believe, and I suppose you might, that blues music has the ability to heal the deepest wounds of the soul.

Much of what I had heard about the movie was formulaic. Christina Ricci half naked chained to a radiator...misogynistic...unsensitive play on sexploitation movies...the frustrations of the male libido glorified through the showcasing of blues; the frustrations of the (dangerous) female libido 'cured' in a self-satisfied gender power-play...

Some reviewers who liked the film have accused its critics of not having watched it. I can see why. Much of the criticism, dressed up as intellectualising gender theory, seem either to give audiences far too little credit, or (which seems more likely) have read the themes of the film in an extraordinarily naive (or faux-naive) way.

That the 'affliction' from which Rae, played by Christina Ricci, needs redemption is extreme nymphomania, should not, I think, be taken too literally in thinking about the 'message' of the film. It is shorthand for hedonism. The film adopts the cinematic conventions of a sexploitation film, and tells a morality tale speaking to the present, not to the past. I will not give anything away, but I would definitely recommend this film, and not just as an object lesson in bad film criticism.

I repeat that this film is not excellent. This seems to have been the verdict of all the positive reviews, perhaps in reaction to the trenchant critics. It is, however, very very good, and contains perhaps the best performance from Samuel L Jackson that I have seen. It also has one of the most enjoyable soundtracks since the film that brought his other great performance, Pulp Fiction. Now that is saying something.

Foundation legends.

2007-08-13T18:31:00.001+01:00

It is taking me a long old time to start to put together the foundations for a theory of religion that doesn't depend on gods. (Some forms of Buddhism, recognisably for most purposes religions, do not seem to have deities).

So I started to think about foundation legends. For a long time it has seemed to me that they fall into two broad types: autochthonous legends: we were literally 'born from the earth' or our ancestors have lived here since some mythical beginning; and legends of conquest: a mythical point of arrival, or the fulfillment of a destiny. Of course, a given society may well not have a simple foundation legend corresponding easily to one of these types. The foundation legend of Christianity provides a suitably convoluted example. The Eden legend is clearly autochthonous, but the Fall leads to exile and that notorious conquest legend involving the 'Promised land.' Of course, the post-Pauline church added, and Augustine significantly expanded, a new conquest legend which pulled the circle back to the original autochthonous legend: the City of God presaginging a return to Eden for the 'Chosen People.' None of this seems to me to undermine the basic scheme of two broad types.

What, then, of the foundation legend of the modern aetheist? Perhaps more importantly, what of the secularist believer of the modern European nation state? The second question is probably incredibly difficult. The first is arguably answerable.

Many foundation legends look, to post-Enlightenment eyes 'irrational.' What are the bases of their truth-claims? There is always, of course, a source of authority promoting the claims of predominent foundation legends over the claims of other versions. This might take the form of collective tradition (for example in the oral traditions of an ancestor cult), a particular text or group of texts, or in the knowledge of a particular caste or hiercarchy of individuals.

The rationalist challenge tends to take the form of an attack on the knowledge system being promoted by this authority. So a Christian might give priority to the legend contained in the Bible, and the authority of the Bible might be re-inforced by the very sanctity of the text, by liturgies containing rituals of reverence, by the sharing of this reverence with community peers, and by the instruction of a hierarchy of clergy. The rationalist might ask: "But how can you believe in this legend, transmitted as it is in a text of doubtful provenance, with a hugely controversial tradition?" The Christian answer will normally be along the lines of "This is the word of the lord."

An ancestor based foundation legend will tend to derive its authority from a societal reverence for the knowledge of ancestors, and for the methods by which this knowledge purports to be transmitted (requently repeated stories are a common method). Two objections which a rationalist might raise are the problem of generational 'Chinese whispers', and the exclusion of new knowledge (progress as New Labour would say) from the tradition. The former can be dealt with quite easily: it has been effectively demonstrated ad nauseam by anthropologists that the form of a story can change markedly over generations, but the frequently oral traditions retain their substantive content to a remarkable degree. The latter raises the consistent point of tension between Enlightenment rationalism and other systems of knowledge. Rationalism cannot accept that, whatever the absolute truth-value of scientific theory, there can be any better method of apprehending the truth than rational thought. In this sense, it is arguably an intellectual cul-de-sac. If so, rationalist attacks on other foundation legends might be suffering from a serious discontinuity.

What of the rationalist foundation legend? The world came into existence as a result of the 'Big Bang;' life evolved according to the principles first formulated by Darwin. That would be my brief take on the current state of rationalist play. It certainly has the possibility of producing a fairly organic cosmology. Rather than tying a social group to a delineated territory on earth, it is a autochthonous foundation myth for humanity, and the territory is the earth. I am not about to dispute that Darwinism is currently the only convincing theory for the development of complicated life forms from simple life forms. However, there are two broader points where the rationalist foundation legend looks highly questionable, even on its own terms.

Firstly, the so-called 'Goldilocks Enigma' - that it is extraordinary that earth should provide a complicated matrix of conditions 'just right' for life - cannot be answered with the observation that if life was to happen anywhere, it must be here, or we could not be here to think about it. This is the reply proposed by a large number of important physicists, and yet philosophically it just won't do. It does not address the 'Goldilocks Enigma,' it just passes the buck.

The second, and more serious, problem lies with the physics of the Big Bang (or any other similar theory). Those who purport to believe that this explains their ultimate origins are placing immense amounts of faith in a small caste of initiates who are privy to secret knowledge. This may seem a bizarre way to describe physicists(!), but the reality of cosmological physics is that all but a select few do not in reality even have any possibilty to understand the science behind the models. For most normal people, the maths is simply beyond us.I suspect this includes most popular science writers, who happily use their authority over their readers to assert such theories as more or less fact, despite lacking the tools to understand them.

It would be absurd to follow this line of argument to its logical conclusion, which would be to attack rationalist theories of knowledge altogether. I am not claiming that 'standing on the shoulders of giants' is not an important part of knowledge acquisition. But I am attempting to demonstrate the circularity of the rationalist foundation myth. It is as externally unverifiable as any other foundation myth. Hence to attack any other foundation myth as 'irrational' is to miss the point.

The point of all this is to suggest that science offers no superior alternative to other kinds of foundation myths. They remain a category of knowledge systems which "provide satisfactory answers to important questions to which nothing else seems able to give satisfactory answers." Naturally that satisfaction remains in the eye of the beholder (or believer). But there simply does not exist an objective alternative.

It seems to me that this (foundation legends) might be one example of the kinds of things which constitute religions. Of course it is a fairly tentative first step, but you have to start somewhere. Suggestions welcome...

Plus ca change

2007-08-07T19:16:00.000+01:00

So I watched the TV news tonight for the first time in a while. And? Foot and mouth outbreaks...Madelaine McCann's parents believe her to be alive...British soldier dies in Basra...Tension between Georgia and Russia.

All these stories have been seen before. So whats new under the sun? Well, 2 things, both appearing well down the programme (this thatbeing Channel 4 at 7 o'clock).

i) This FMD outbreak has been assessed as extremely likely to have emenated from Pirbright research centre, where there are two operations. The first is a governmental research institute. The second is that of a private company, Merrill, with which the government yesterday placed an order for 300,000 doses of FMD vaccine. I don't know what other viruses, affecting animals or humans, are treated at these and similar sites, but for FMD to infect livestock as a result of biosecurity lapses at Pirbright, this soon after the enourmous slaughter of the last outbreak, is beyond disgraceful.

ii) GB again makes headlines for 'distancing' Britain from the US. This time he has persuaded Bush to release 5 non UK nationals who have residency here from Guantanamo. If that is the best he can do to mark a change in TB's policy to the US, those who fear the position of Britain's shoulder should be fearful indeed. Even those of us who think our security depends upon our relationship with America must fear that we are to become embroiled in yet more international atrocities as a result...

Paydirt

2007-08-07T00:25:00.000+01:00

That is all.

A new ice age?

2007-08-02T21:52:00.000+01:00

More Russian strategic activity has found a prominent place in the UK media. The story is, in some ways, very funny.

""This isn't the 15th Century," Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay told the CTV channel. "You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say 'We're claiming this territory'," he said."

It is also unsurprising: Putin has been quite consistent in taking steps to increase Russian influence over the acquisition and distribution of natural resources.

Of more interest is the pattern of reportage in the British media. Russia has been taken more seriously here, it would seem, since the assassination of Litvinenko. Compare this relatively low key article about the Russia-Georgia gas standoff, from a couple of weeks before Litvinenko's death with this article in German publication Spiegel right back on 4th September 2006. It will be interesting to see how both Britain and the EU proceed - there have already been signs of Britain adopting a confrontation stance in diplomatic circles.

Something from Charles Baudelaire. Seems like sound advice.

2007-07-30T16:54:00.000+01:00

Enivrez-Vous

Il faut être toujours ivre.
Tout est là:
c'est l'unique question.
Pour ne pas sentir
l'horrible fardeau du Temps
qui brise vos épaules
et vous penche vers la terre,
il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.
Mais de quoi?
De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu, à votre guise.
Mais enivrez-vous.
Et si quelquefois,
sur les marches d'un palais,
sur l'herbe verte d'un fossé,
dans la solitude morne de votre chambre,
vous vous réveillez,
l'ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue,
demandez au vent,
à la vague,
à l'étoile,
à l'oiseau,
à l'horloge,
à tout ce qui fuit,
à tout ce qui gémit,
à tout ce qui roule,
à tout ce qui chante,
à tout ce qui parle,
demandez quelle heure il est;
et le vent,
la vague,
l'étoile,
l'oiseau,
l'horloge,
vous répondront:
"Il est l'heure de s'enivrer!
Pour n'être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps,
enivrez-vous;
enivrez-vous sans cesse!
De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise."

The doggy king.

2007-07-28T20:28:00.000+01:00

The was a minor row recently over thw CRE's call to have 'Tintin au Congo' banned. Among the complaints were the charge that the storylines were racist, including a tribe mistaking Tintin for a god and and crowning his dog king. I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest recently. Among the plotlines are the crew of the Black Pearl, led by Jonny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, being stranded on an island, where savages mistake Sparrow for a god. At the end of the film, after the credits have rolled, the is a shot of the dog (who got left behind in the film). He is on a throne, wearing a crown.

Do the CRE know this? I think they should be told...

Harry Potter, inter alia. May contain spoilers.

2007-07-26T22:30:00.001+01:00

So, I'm back after extended interweb technical issues, and should be online constantly now. Woo-hoo! I have got my myspace up and running, and have read Harry Potter number seven. I can't say I was blown away, but it certainly got me thinking. Look away now if you don't want to know what happens...

Harry's sacrifice

Harry reconciles himself to death for love: for the love of individuals, certainly, but in their place as members of the human race. His job is to do no less than sacrifice himself - his life - to save the human race. The distinction here is between a faction which accepts the equal value of every human life - wizards, Muggles, and to an extent elves and giants - over the followers of Voldemort, the Death Eaters, who have chosen to be nourished by death (aka authoritarian power) over love (aka paternalistic authoritarianism). But who is in charge in the world Harry sacrifices himself for (he does not yet know that he will in fact survive)? In one sense Harry has won a victory which will allow Muggles born with magical powers to participate in the magical world, and to protect the remainder from unsolicited magic. It is a victory for the status quo; a very conservative cosmos.

A conservative cosmos

What first struck me was, when Harry and Hermione are frantically on the run around rural Britain, living outside mainstream society in both the magical and muggle worlds, Hermione dons pyjamas to go to sleep in. It struck me that Philip Pullman's Lyra would never waste time or resources on such homely comfords when she was on her perilous epic voyage. And from there the prfound conservatism of Rowling's worldview unfolded as I read. That Christianity is never discussed in terms of the series' cosmology, but the carols ringing out from the church as an assumed part of the normality of Christmas eve in the wizardly village where Harry was an infant seems to offer an extraordinarily Anglican view of the role of churchgoing in the moral lives of Potter's Britain. Churchgoing is a tradition which rumbles on, yet offers no dialogue with the battle for the moral souls of the wizarding world. We are told that this is a village largely populated by wizards. Had it been a Muggle village, we might have identified some interesting commentary on the relationship between Muggle and wizard cosmology. But this is a church full of wizards, and the lack of further comment is very puzzling.

That Harry's world is one embedded in Judaeo-Christian moral absolutes, not to mention a ringing endorsement of social conservatism has been noticed by a Catholic journalist, Leonie Caldecott, who in an article for Touchstone, Paradise Denied,
defends Rowling against her Christian detractors, emphasising how far her cosmology reinforces that of Christianity. She contrasts the cosmology of Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, arguing that it represents an aggressive attack against childhood. Pullman, she claims is, by offering up, in the shape of a fairy tale, a story which has adopted a Neoplatinist dualism, but opted to see the material, rather than the spiritual, half of the cosmos as the one of greatest experiential significance, he has endangered the spiritual education of the hundreds of thousands of young people who have devoured his books: "Young people, of all faiths and none, who contemplated the fragility of life after September 11th, require all possible spiritual resources to face the future." (It is only fair to point out that Caldecott wrote her article after only five Harry Potter books; I think she was quite prescient about the final pair, and am entirely unconvinced that they would have altered her line of argument.)

It would be easy to be put off by her Catholic viewpoint. However, I think she makes some very good points if her agenda is taken into account. One cannot help but be reminded of Richard Dawkins' "viruses of the mind" thesis (now presented most fully in his ludicrous "The God Delusion.") I suspect if he weren't so blinkered he could enjoy a lively conversation with Caldecott, for she is surely claiming a similar role for the role of myth in childhood. What is striking is that both Dawkins and Caldecott seem terrified of the consequences of children having access to the wrong kind of ideas, although of course they would differ massively on what the right kind of ideas are. What is extraordinary is that neither pauses to wonder that we got to here with children having had access to the 'wrong' kinds of stories for millenia. Caldecott has the excuse that her religious beliefs are her strongest priority. For Dawkins, yet again, venturing onto ground about which the social sciences have a great deal of intelligence and insight to say, his failure to take them serious as disciplines (notwithstanding the quality of some individual exponents, and I could say as much about biology or any other discipline) means that there remains a huge unfilled space in his thought which renders much of his published thought risible.

Back from the far side of the blogosphere...

2007-06-26T22:38:00.000+01:00

Dot, who I work for, discovered 'beforeafall,' which is where I went for some reason when I stopped posting here, before quickly moving on. I had forgotten all about it. I liked it here, though, and thought I might resurrect it for light-hearted stuff. I guess few people still link to here (as if thousands ever did), but it will give me a project trying to get reinstated. I guess Si would be the person to ask to start me off, but he is off to Russia on Saturday, so it remains to be seen how active ukplc will be for the next few weeks.

I went to cousin Louise's wedding to Jem in York at the weekend. I have no wedding photos yet, but here are pictures of the happy couple pilfered from Jem's blog.

I have moved

2006-03-07T14:30:00.000Z

www.beforeafall.blogspot.com

James

Sunny Hertfordshire

2005-08-15T16:48:00.000+01:00

I am back in Watford, but not online, so not blogging much until that changes. I am working some shifts in the White Hart Tap in St. Albans, and writing frantically in the meantime.

I'm coming home to stay

2005-07-20T13:22:00.000+01:00

Today. The Venice adventure is over. It has been fun. I will blog on anyway I guess.

Freaky weather

2005-07-11T11:50:00.001+01:00

September the 11th is a sad anniversary for residents of Venice and the lagoon. The significant event was not the famous attack on New York in 2001, however. Instead, the tornado of 1970, which left 37 dead, many after a boat was lifted into the air. On a day when Florida and Alabama suffered a buffering from the weather systems of the Atlantic, we were served up a minature reminder of the curious possibilities created by Venice's weird microclimate.

Across the lagoon to the north a promontary runs from the mainland in the north down towards the north edge of Venice's lido. Susie and I were on a beach on the eastern shore yesterday afternoon. It was a fine day to the east and the sun was hot. We were aware, however, that behind us a storm appeared to be blowing. As the clous built up behind us it has a perculiar feature: what appeared to be a tornado.

When the sun was finally overtaken by clouds, there was a sudden mass exodus from the busy beach. Upon reaching the road some 60 ar 70 yards behind the beach, we found people out on the street, all discussing the same thing: a tornado. As we had been sunbathing, 50 yards away a tornado had swept through, depositing hailstones, and rearranging the dust and burned plantlife of a hot summer's day. I am glad to report there were no injuries.

Phoenix

2005-07-08T10:59:00.000+01:00

Having stayed in the pub until the early hours watching Sky news; seeing the pale, shocked face of Tony Blair, and the walls of Tavistock Square an unnatural blood-spattered pink, it was hard to know how anyone could be reacting in any way which could be described as stoic. And yet that adjective was used time after time by correspondants and politicians. The reaction of many seems to have been typically, upliftingly 'Londoner', and perhaps what is being called stoicism is best illustrated by the follwing snippets.

A London taxi driver said: "...people are getting on with it. It's marvellous that they're showing their backbone. The thing is, with us Londoners, we're used to the IRA. We don't know anything else. You don't like it, but you learn to deal with it."

The IHT reports that yesterday afternoon, there were cues of people waiting to give blood on Edgeware road.

A Swedish woman who was on one of the tube trains said: "The car quickly filled with smoke, and a lot of people used their umbrellas to try to break the windows so that we could get air."

To not let terrorists win, life must go on. Seeing Brian Paddick at a news conference yesterday reminded me of the interview he had given after the Old Compton Street nail bombing. That has not been forgotten, but Soho is again vibrant and busy. London will recover from this, but perhaps the most important thing is that it does not colour our views: on Iraq, on ID cards, on the war on terror, on immigration.

As for stoicism, the ability to help each other keep on keeping on is only a small part of it. The deeper challenge presented by Stoicism will be much more difficult, but no less important. As Marcus Aurelius puts it:

"When people injure you, ask yourself what good or harm they thought would come of it. If you understand that, you'll feel sympathy rather than outrage or anger. Your sense of good and evil may be the same as theirs, or near it, in which case you have to excuse them. Or your sense of good and evil may differ from theirs. In which case they're misguided and deserve your compassion. Is that so hard?"

Of course it is so hard, with people still trapped in the tunnel between Kings Cross and Russel Square. But one thing we cannot and will not do is fight hate with hate.

London bombing

2005-07-07T16:06:00.000+01:00

The scale of what happened this morning in London is not yet entirely clear. As far as I know none of my friends and colleagues were not involved, but there are many who I don't know for sure weren't. Having spent five years half expecting an attack, but having always assumed it would be targeted on the City or Docklands, rather than the area around UCL - Tavistovk Sq, Russel Sq and Great Portland Street, and with Si living at Sandwich St, the concurrent feelings of closeness and distance as a result of being in Venice are really quite strange. I don't really have anything to say, and yet...

A dark day.

Implausible deniability?

2005-07-01T08:42:00.000+01:00

Two news items caught the eye today, one very silly, the other not so.

Having seen his club win the Superbowl for the third time in three years, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was understandably proud to show off his 124 diamond winners ring when he and other business moguls met Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg. Having taken off the ring to show Putin, Kraft may have been surprised when Putin tried it on, put it in his pocket, and walked out of the room. Expensive misunderstanding or generous gift? We may never know. But as James Alder summises: "If Kraft's intention was to present Putin with his prized possession, then it was a very generous offer. If he did not, however, this could develop into a huge embarrassment for Kraft and the United States should he attempt to recover it." Quite.

A more serious item has excited the Italian news agenda this week. On 17th Feb 2003, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr (aka Abu Omar) was kidnapped while walking down a Milan street, and flown to his native Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured. A week ago, an Italian judge ordered the arrest of 13 foreign (nationalities unspecified) CIA operatives under Ialian kidnapping laws. Berlusconi is in a tricky position. Did he collaberate with the CIA to break Italian law? Or did the CIA unilaterally carry out a covert kidnapping in the land of one of it's allies in Iraq? The CIA implausible claim that "rendition" was undertaken without the knowledge of Italian security services, but with the knowledge of certain Italian officials, in order to protect the CIA's usual cover story viz. "plausible deniablity."

Finally, we are currently plagued by a TV ad campaign fronted by the stupidly beautiful Adriana Lima. You can watch them here, should you wish, and I include a photo for information purposes only!

Whatever...

2005-06-29T14:38:00.000+01:00

Having just dug out an old Tom Waits record, and stuck it on, I was battered by the accusing words: "What is this? We're not middle aged, you know!" Thank you, Susie, for the first clear indication that we probably are.

On the other hand, having seen Garbage at Imola, I was tempted to revisit Butch Vig's finest moment as a producer, Nevermind. A fine, fine record. Which Susie will not listen to either. Looks like our diet of Whiskeytown, The Killers, Joni Mitchell and Norah Jones will enrich our cultural lives for a bit longer.

I have been in London for a postgrad conference of European historians and a smattering of other social sciences. And mighty fun it was too. The last paper was a strange one by a Russian, who was talking about writing history. He was mainly claiming that nothing is real until there is a word for it. Maaan, some of these Eastern Europeans have not quite resolved how to move on from the structuralist project yet. At the end of a relatively long and hard conference, people were tired, and tempers getting frayed. Anyway, the mood was lightened by a student of George Soros' Central European University telling this speaker that all his problems arose from an unresolved conflict between form and content. And moreover, that nobody had written a decent book addressing this issue. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance anyone? Or was that banned by the Commies?

The weekend ended at 5am in an underground Spanish bar; undoubtedly illegal in oh so many ways, dancing to bad Spanish music. It was an excellent night, and the venue was the unpromising door next to Mia Sevilla, on the street near Centre Point where some Godwins lived for a while. Highly recommended.

In other news, 89 year old woman comes to Venice and drinks grappa! Great stuff.

Today I will mostly be talking about...

2005-06-15T12:15:00.000+01:00

Sheep. I will be addressing the seminar of post graduate students in European Social History at Ca Foscari. It should be good.

Meanwhile...I saw these men making noise at Imola on Saturday, which was splendid. Two uncles and a grandmother came to Venice the week before. And previous to that...this:

Yes, Sarah and Jon got married. Well done!

Goodies in Hoodies

2005-06-13T12:23:00.000+01:00

I am ending my hiatus, figuring it was long enough. How about a good word for some hoody wearers. First up, an undoubted goody in a hoody: Obe Wan Kenobi.

Ricoeur is dead

2005-05-23T17:42:00.000+01:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4570183.stm

Well, something had to stir me out of my lethargic silence.

Look at this!

2005-04-27T10:28:00.000+01:00

To make up for my prolonged and inexplicable absence, the third best goal ever. Enjoy.

http://www.ibkornar.se/zlatan/Zlatan.wmv

An ill wind on the rise

2005-04-04T12:58:00.000+01:00

Individual deaths are the twine which binds history together. Not lives, or even births (the lifeblood of the Annales ESC has washed away the "Big Man", with biography suspending him in human time, of which more later). Deaths are the punctuations of history: they provide a temporality we can understand. Eras are marked by deaths: Tiberius Gracchus, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Naploeon III, even Jesus of Nazareth. The past ten days or so have seen three deaths which provide the punctuation for the moment we are in. Fugyama has never been more wrong than now: history is not dead. We are at a moment of change, and history has never been as alive as it is now.

An old man dies. He was a major politician in the four decades after the war. He was Foreign Minister, Home Secretary, Chancellor and Prime Minister. He had lived through remarkable changes, not least the wild thrashing of the normally steady pendulum of British politics. He died shortly before an election which will not involve the party he served; an election where integrity is almost entirely absent. He was a politician who ultimately failed, but failed partly as a result of acting with integrity.

A young woman dies. Severe, prolonged bulimia had led her body to fail her: to leave her in what has been described as a permanent vegitative state. Having pushed her body to accept her control over it to unsustainable limits, she had lost control. Her ultimate weapon in her battle for personal control had become the arsenal of a battle she could not participate in. She died in a country whose political pendulum was swinging on a diffrent arc to that of Britain. Integrity had become supremely important. Voters had been mobilised by integrity, and their new representatives fought to prove that their integrity was solid, based in action. Inegrity was expected, even now from the leaders of the three great Abrahamic religious movements. From Judaism: she must be allowed to die!; from Catholic Christianity: she must not be allowed to die!; from Islam: it is supremely important, but we cannot decide!

The head of one of these religions died. Guidelines for the care of the young woman had been developed under his leadership, twenty five years ago. They did not look as unambiguous as the pronouncements of his Cardinals would have them appear: they provided for that tenet of Catholic doctrine, the grace of God. Should the essential fallibility of the human condition allow Theresa Schiavo to submit to the weakness of her God-given body?

This century has seen the rise and (sometimes) fall of political extremeism. The age of dictatorship is not yet over, but would seem to be on the wane. A glance around the globe supports this view: from Pinochet to de Klerk, from the Ukraine to East Timor, oppressed minorities are inspired by examples of resistance, and being emboldened to take their desinies into their own hands. These attempts have not all been successful - Rwanda and Kurdish Turkey provide differing examples, but the impetus is with insurgency.

As political extremeism dies, the political imperitive of extremist regimes to supress of control religion dies as well. Instead religious movements are resurgent, continuing to grapple above the heads of those who will not heed or participate.

Globalisation includes the globalisation of knowledge, awareness. We can no longer see the Holocaust as unique. We can no longer see evil as strange. The globe is covered by evil, murderous, exploitative humans, clinging to group identities, and lashing out at difference. This isn't how it was supposed to be. The Enlightenment was exported with Empire, the world acquiesced to greater good. But this myth was blown apart by explosions in power vaccuums the world over.

The natural world stuck its oar in too. Unable to be ignored for long, the world wreaked a havoc which could now be seen by the peple it did not touch directly.

In a world of unanswerable questions, rationality cannot provide security. Only faith in the unfalsifiable can do that. The secular era was not the end of history, it was an era. Faced with the burning certainty of unquestionable, unfalsifiable belief, the secular world will be blown away by the unshakeable conviction of religious teleology.

Fernand Braudel divided time into three levels, or orders: human time (a lifetime), historical time (an empire), and geographical time (between two ice ages). We exist in human time, we wonder about geographical time, and we are unsure how to objectively view historical time. The Times have been a'Changing since a long time before Bob noticed. But those three recent deaths hint as to the direction these changes are working in. Callaghan died a man from a previous age. The Pope died just as the age for such a man was beginning. And Terri Schiavo died, the symptom of these changes, a religious, political, moral, ethical contest waged over the fate of her frail, liminal body.

You don't ask much...

2005-04-01T16:07:00.000+01:00

OK, so I have not posted for a while, but Rick's gip about my tipping is a bit rich. At cheltenham I gave picks for 19 races. I had six winners at 7/1, 6/4, 17/2, 7/1, 7/2 and 7/2. That is a profit of £190 if you did all 19 for £10 win. Show me a tipping service that does better than that.

Regular blog posts will return soon.

The Grand National shortlist is: Clan Royal, Bindaree, Amberleigh House, First Gold and Juracon. Possibly Gunther McBride too, if it runs.

Gold cup day

2005-03-18T11:09:00.000Z

Time is short, so I must be brief. Kicking king will win the gold cup, with celestial gold the only danger. Sleeping night will win the foxhunter if it jumps properly, unless lord atturbury comes back to life. Brewster has an excellent chance in the staying hurdle. Bongo fury would be the county hurdle pick. Kadount would hve been the grand annual choice but does not run, and only fools and rich men bet on the triumph hurdle.

Cheltenham day 3

2005-03-16T15:49:00.000Z

If any of my dear readers are guillable enough to follow my tips, they will be feeling significantly richer now, after 17/2 and 6/4 winners. The ball may be harder to keep rolling on day 3, with only two worthwhile events.

World Hurdle: Baracouda will probably win, but is evens; Inglis Drever may put up most resistance and might be more fun ew, at around 7/1.

Festival Trophy: 1) Our Vic
2) Rathgar Beau
3) Thisthatandtother

but it is tight between the three.

Be lucky!

Day 2

2005-03-15T16:25:00.000Z

Contaband won at 7/1, so day one was not too bad. For day two:

R+SA Hurdle: 1) No refuge
2) Roman ark
3) Forager

R+SA Chase
1) L'ami
2) Comply or die
3) Trablogan

Champion Chase
1) moscow flyer
2) azertyuiop
3) well chief

Cheltenham

2005-03-14T15:50:00.000Z

Every year people ask me for Cheltenham tips. So this year, I will make life easier all round by putting them up on here.

Tuesday: Supreme Novices Hurdle - 1) My Way de Solzen
2) Marcel
3) wild Passion

Arkle Chase - 1) Contraband
2) Limerick boy
3) My Will
4) Town Crier

Champion Hurdle - 1) Back in Front (NAP)
2) Rooster Booster
3) Harchibald
4) Brave Inca

William Hill Handicap trophy - 1) Iris Bleu (NB)

Cross Country Chase - 1) Majed
2) Smarty
3) Mrs B

That is all.

Do the hippy hippy shake

2005-03-09T15:50:00.000Z

Watching Chelsea beat Barcalona last night, I witnessed the unusual spectacle of rodenty Brazilian Ronaldinho doing a little jig by way of dummy, before kicking the ball into a net guarded by a stationary defence and a stunned goalkeeper. Magic. Any team that defends like Chelski did last night cannot win the tournament, though. Still AC Milan for me.

Genocide

2005-03-03T15:38:00.000Z

Today is my 25th birthday, but the topic is a rum one, I'm afraid. Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, and we should quite rightly remember. Five million Africans have died in genocidal attacks in Africa since 1993. How can we be parsimonious about the Holocaust when our government does nothing to intervene and we do nothing to force them to. In 60 years time, people will say to us "Why did nobody do anything?"

Botswana

Sudan

Rwanda

Oscar night

2005-03-01T12:55:00.000Z

Although they do not rate near the top of my annual "to see" list, the Oscars never fail to be mildly diverting. I was glad to see Morgan Freedman and Cate Blanchett win, as I rate them both very highly. However, the legacy of this year looks far more likely to be the ongoing failure to "recognise" Martin Scorsese. It will be interesting to see if he one day scoops an Oscar for a film far less great than those he should have won for. Also, I believe Million Dollar Baby is elegable for next years Baftas. What odds it wins none?

Greasy Pole? Is that summink to do with that Spearmint Rhino?

2005-02-28T18:46:00.000Z

Having decided that, close to election time as we are, I would ignore politics entirely for at least six months, the little Rousseau in my head (no, not a manifestation of extending mental health problems) roused this bit of the lumpen proletariat from its slumber again. First of all, I am disenfranchised, since to vote abroad, you need to get you form signed by a British national who has known you for a long time and also lives in your foreign land. Wives are not appropriate signatories, it would seem.

So, in my quest for enfranchisement, I contacted my MP, Claire Ward (see Mules passim), who, as usual offered no assistance. This came as no surprise. What in fact stirred me from my coma was her acting on another issue altogether. The first time I have noticed her do anything was when she rose from her usually cold back bench to fire bigears Clarke a cunning curveball. "If someone is under house arrest, what will the people who live with them do?"

Sterling work, Claire: you're worth every penny, love. Sad I won't be able to vote for you in May.

I also noticed that Jade Johnson is helping the London Olympic bid. For those of you who don't know, she is Britains best female long jumper. And I think they should be making more use of her. Why? Well, work it out for yourself.

Face of London 2012:

OR: Face of London 2012:

Go figure.

The Don

2005-02-25T15:49:00.000Z

Don Giussani, I meant. Don Giovani inspired Italinas in an altogether differnt way!

By dread I'm inspired, by fear I'm amused?

2005-02-25T15:44:00.000Z

Looking forward to returning to the newly totalitarian England. Oh, we're not allowed to compare Clark and Goebells, are we, cos Goebells was like,proper evil, whereas Charles is just stoopid.

Here Don Giovanni, inspirer of Italy's Catholic Youth has died, but everyone is praying forthe Pope.

I have been listening exclusively to Nick Cave, and mostly to the Carnie, so excuse my apprently fragile mental health.

I might cross Nuneaton borough on a Vespa and see if it enpowes me to revolutionary greatness...

Guess who's back?

2005-02-21T13:24:00.000Z

Been a touch busy for blogging, and a touch busy for anything long now, but here is the nooz:

I am in the UK from the 2nd to the 7th of March. Hurrah!

It is snowing in Venice, which is nice.

I recieved an invitation to the wedding of Sarah Maria to Captain Jonathan Charles Bramall RAMC. This did not come as a surprise, but one part of the instructions to guests did:

"Please could you not wear a sword unless you have been invited as we will have limited space to secure them."

Anyone know where I could lay my hands on a mace?

Funny way to celebrate

2005-02-08T13:14:00.000Z

A wales fan told his drinking buds that if they beat England at rugby on Saturday, he would cut his own balls off. A man of his word, it seems.

Happy Pancake day to all, and, Kung Hei Fat Choi for tomorrow.

Simon has got me going

2005-02-04T11:33:00.000Z

His response on his blog to my comments about the Holocaust have provoked some thought. Sadly nothing verycoherent as yet. Still, more will follow on that when my brain starts working.

On a lighter note, it is Carnival week in Venice. Gets the anthropologist in me revving up. Masked balls? Status inversion? Gold book: weren't they? Paupers as princes, didn't they? And all the English could think about was food, wasn't it?

Also, my review of Venice is now proudly displayed at www.urtheory.co.uk. It was written in more tourist infested times, and I'm not sure that is what I think now, but still...

I am off to find a recipe for the perfect pancake. You can take the man out of England, blahblah blah...

IN HELL: JONNY CASH

2005-01-29T16:58:00.000Z

Or probably, according to this guy.a Just go there, and immerse yourself. I promise it is far too good to miss.

What have you done Rodney?

2005-01-29T16:45:00.000Z

I felt moved to write a word of sympathy for Rodney Marsh, who got sacked from his job presenting Sky Sports football for a throwaway quip:

The ex-Manchester City striker, 60, joked David Beckham had turned down a move to Newcastle United because of trouble with the "Toon Army in Asia".

Alright, awful pun, but that is presumably not the sackable offence.

A spokesman for the channel described the joke as "offensive and inexcusable".

This seems a bit harsh. I appreciate it is not the thing to be quipping about, but surely getting Rodney to apologise would have done. I think he has the right to feel quite aggreived about receiving his P45.

Meanwhile, the Carnival is just kicking off, and among the upcoming festivities is a live performance by the Thelonius Monk ensemble. I thought the great man passed away in 1982, but then there are similar rumours about Elvis...

Forgetting the Holocaust and the end of Enlightenment

2005-01-25T10:54:00.000Z

It has taken me a while to post, beacause lots of the things on my mind have seemed to be loosely connected, but not quite gelled.

Walking along the fondamenta beside the lagoon on Sunday, we passed a line of stalls selling tourist merchandise. One of the most prominent items was an apron, with an illustration of Mussolini in military uniform standing proud.

If we are to believe the statistics, damned lies and statistics produced by UK polling agencies, 60% of British under thirty fives do not know what Auschwitz is/was.

This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Media attention is currently focused on today's memorial for the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Prince Harry has been in tabloids world wide after wearing an African corps uniform, with swastika armband, to a friends fancy dress party.

If pressed on when I consider the modern era to be, I would give as symbolic termini the French Revolution and the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

So, what does all this add up to? The 'modern' era, following the Enlightenment was characterised above all by a great humanistic optimism. Society was progressive, and colonialiam, now such a dirty word, hurried this progress in other parts of the world. The export of Enlightenment values was, in the Enlightenment's terms, self-evidently good. The cradle of this Enlightenment was Northern Europe. The United States provided a blank canvass for the architects of the brave new world, and the Federalist Papers attest to their brilliant determination to fashion a better kind of society.

It is possible to see Hiroshima as the hubristic trough of scientific progress' collision with human fallibility. It is also possible to see this moment as ultimately shattering to the Enlightenment dream. Men had always fought wars. Hiroshima starkly demonstrated that they could never unthinkingly do so again: that men had at last designed a weapon which could destroy them.

This weapon is symbolic of the difference of the Second World War. In many ways, the Great War was more horrific for the troops fighting it, but the Second World War was the first 'total' war of the modern West.

And this is the crunch with the Holocaust. The fact that these atrocities were perpetrated by one of those countries which formed the cradle of the Enlightenment was the final insult to high minded humanists. As such, Auschwitz was supposed to be our great modern myth. 'Lest we forget', a phrase most often spoken about the Great War found a new resonance in the memory of the Holocaust. But how could we forget? To the elder half of Britain's population it is so self evident that the Holocaust provides the most terrible, infernal warning, that it will never be forgotten. Unfortunately, the very obviousness of the atrocity may have allowed the message to go unspoken for too long.

It has been written that Harry's antics suggest that Britain has a problem to deal with in moving on from the Second World War. But it is not indifference which leads to that kind of micky-taking, it is ignorance. The Germans need to be allowed to write the history of the war crimes against them, and the scale of atrocity on both sides needs to be recognised. But the winners also need to start taking history seriously and not let relativism destroy the most important cultural memory we have.

The problems 'history' faces in this task are well illustrated by the current Labour government. Their outlook "change=progress=good" is a horrible sort of pseudo-Enlightened ahistory which recognises no dissent from the maxim that democracy and a global market are the only forces for good. As each day passes, the US abroad follows the path to doom once walked by the Athenian Empire. In Britain, the cult of progress derides the humanities as indulgent folly. Following this path is a bad idea. The 60th anniversary of peace provides a reminder of the lessons the World War taught us. Harry, the Mussolini aprons, and the statistics and lies are all there lest we forget.

Be prepared...

2005-01-19T16:30:00.000Z

That's what they told us in the cubs. But I wasn't prepared, oh no no no. Not for this. Moody grey skies one minute, a snow storm the next. Sporting, as is my custom, footwear well past its sell by date, I found the snow wending its devious way into the cavity normally reserved for feet. Oh dear. I am not, in general, a weakminded fool, but this was cold. Cold and wretched. soon a pleasant tingling numbness was the overriding sensation. When I got home, however, and removed the treacherous footwear, my feet were covered in an unusual array of icicles. The thawing process was not an enjoyable one.

I guess the moral of this story "is that a man should never be where he does not belong."

Stupid Mediterranean climate.

Aussies get culture?

2005-01-11T15:14:00.000Z

Aussie girl on phone in internet cafe:

"All the old buildings in Prague are pristine. In Italy they are all fucked! They are fucking falling over! Like the Colloseum, is just a heap of junk! What excuse do they have? Berlin was bombed to shit, but they fixed that up all right. The Italians have no excuse. They are too fucking lazy to bother. In the colloseum, the floor was all sunken and hilly and fucked up. It was like "dudes, fix your floor!""

And so it went on...

A good journalist chooses his words with care

2005-01-11T13:17:00.000Z

One of the more unfortunate things I read in the tsunami aftermath:

"With luck the impact of the tsunami reponse on global responses to aid will be of seismic proportions."

Ouch.

Things to think about in 2005

2005-01-07T16:36:00.000Z

As well as assorted waffle and moaning about the weather, I decided to make a list of things to occupy that grey matter not thinking about Cicero.

1) 1789-1989 looks distinctly like an era. What era have we just entered?

2) China. It's important, but everybody talks bollocks about it. Especially the now sumissive to Murdoch Lord Rees-Mogg, who used to have a mind of his own.

3) Noam Chomsky. Si's hero, but it is hard to read his views on Cambodia without feeling distinctly uneasy. Not genocide?

4) Post-modernism. The most misunderstood and misused phrase in the world. I'm going to explain it simply, clearly and briefly. After which I will not tolerate further misunderstanding. OK?

5) Italy. No, forget it. This country is one messed up puppy.

6) Max Weber. He is on the list every year, and, wearily, I'm still grinding away.

7) The depredations of age. Why does the music of Nanci Griffith become more alluring with every passing year?

8) Why do Americans go to the cinema? Don't ask, its all Si's fault.

9) Bioethics. Don't ask, its all somebody else's fault.

...Which gives me three spare months. Suggestions will be taken on board and marked "ballast".

2005

2005-01-06T13:58:00.000Z

So here we are. Back in Venice. Apologies to those I didn't find at all (notably Matt) and those who didn't find me a second time (everybody else). Shit happened. What can I say?

I'm in muted mood today, but regular updates will begin tomorrow. In the meantime, I have just read "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell" by Susanna Clarke, and heartily recommend it.

Apoplepsy

2004-12-17T14:51:00.000Z

Charles Clarke? Charles Clarke? Never nas a man of such little intellect, common sense or courtesy risen so high. Charles Clarke? I mean, I didn't expect Ben "Pinky" Bradshaw or anything, but Charles Clarke? Jesus wept. Again.

Chavs in Venice

2004-12-16T13:24:00.000Z

Her: heels too high for successful perambulation.

Him: all those Burberry essentials.

Her to him (in Essex Street patois): 'I don't give a flyin' fuck about all the old crap, (building to crescendo) I jus' wanna go SHOP - ING!'

I leave the sociocultural analysis to the experts, merely noting a queasy unease that Sean Ryder is in some small way responsible.

No Way, Punk!

2004-12-13T11:42:00.000Z

RIP Dimebag Darrell. The Pantera fretman was shot dead during a concert in Ohio. The curious or unconverted really need to get there hands on a copy of Grammy nominated "Far Beyond Driven" and find out what they have been missing out on.

What is an international court for? 96 countries have agreed to sign up to an agreement known as Article 98 to agree mutually with the US not to bring suit upon each othewrs citizens at the mInternational Criminal Court at the Hague. Countries who do not sign up will be subject to sanctions from the US. I do not currently know whether the UK intends to sign up, but if we do, it probably spells the end of any suit for unlawful imprisonment by the British held at Guantanamo Bay. Anybody captured by an army should be classified a POW until a competant tribuneral has met and reclassified them an enemy combatent. US flouting of the Geneva convention is dangerous, and pressure needs to be put on government of EU member states not to accept it.

Rumsfeld told frustrated US troops that you go to war with the army you have, not the one you might want to have. Will they go and protect Taiwan from the Chinese invasion promised by Beijing, should the government push seperatist policy too far? No way, but if they did the Chinese might quicken steps to swap dollars for Euros in their central reserve. Perhaps the French have the right idea after all.

If the Conservatives do not push the issue of Blair lying over the legal justification for the Iraq war in the runup to the 5th May General Election, they deserve to be burnt at the stake. The time will have come to for a popular alternative. Ashley Vickers at 32 may be a bit old to be England captain by the next world cup. Vickers for PM? Come on Ashley, by the time we elect you, George Weah will be President of Liberia. And they say footballers are getting too powerful...

Hand luggage only for the journey home...

2004-12-07T10:48:00.000Z

...for fear of a rogue gendarme stuffing my bag with explosives, to be detected by a pup with sinus problems. In the wonderfully deadpan account of the New York Times' Matthew Saltmarsh:

"According to accounts by the police, the suitcase was chosen at random after its owner checked it in, and the explosives were inserted by bomb squad gendarmes. A sniffer dog successfully identified the bag,a dark blue suitcase, but a second dog failed to do so, and before anyone noticed the bag had disappeared down a conveyer belt...At a time when the threat of terrorism is very much on the minds of the police in Europe, the incident was a blow for the French."

And those cheese eating surrender monkeys have already let Richard Reid slip through the net.

Anyways, with a mere fortnight before our return to the motherland, I started wondering what I miss about il Regno Unito.

1) Grass. Yes I know it is always greener on the other side, but in Venice there is none. Not even a derisory, turd infested attempt at a verge.

2) Mexican food.

3) The daily deluge of junk mail from Alveston Place, Leamington Spa.

4) Fuller's Jack Frost, especially by the fire in the Garibaldi.

5) Full access to football results. The Sunday Times even publishes the Northeastern Christian Fellowship Division Two results, which are difficult to find even on the internet. As for trying to get league tables for the conference feeder leagues...

6) Radio. Here the only English language stations are a thing where you phone into a monk for scriptural advice, and the US armed forces radio. Makes me long for Wogan, never mind Wossey.

7) Tomato ketchup.

For the sake of balance, there are some things I do not miss:

1) David Blunkett

2) Anybody who has, or may have, or may have even considered, sleeping with David Blunkett.

3) Chris Kamara yelling his match report. Every bloody week.

4) An uncritical respect for English clubs in Europe. We can't live on former Manker glories forever.

I'm not dead

2004-12-02T10:23:00.000Z

Which is nice. The tremors centred upon Verona were not followed up by a larger catastrophe, and, partly in consequence, I am not dead. unlike Swedish wrestling supremo Mikael Ljungberg. Look at this for an obituary:

Mikael Ljungberg (June 13, 1970 - November 17, 2004) was a Swedish wrestler from Gothenburg. He competed for Örgryte IS.

Ljungberg was one of the most successful Swedish wrestlers ever. He won World Championship gold medals in 1993 and 1995, European Championship gold medals in 1995 and 1999, and an Olympic gold medal in 2000.

On November 17, 2004, while receiving care at the psychiatric ward of the Mölndal hospital outside Gothenburg, he committed suicide.

Earthquake!

2004-11-25T09:32:00.000Z

We had a little earthquake at about midnight last night. Enough to make everything shake. It is the first one I have experienced, and it was a little bit spooky.

Health for life: only £150!

2004-11-22T09:49:00.000Z

Who says Neocons can't do irony? Bush has chosen his new education tsar: Miss Spellings!

In Britain, meanwhile, the Cabinet have gone all metapysical on us. Ben Bradshaw assures us "There are very real challenges to be faced in Iraq." How real, Ben? I mean, are they challenges that can be faced physically, or do spiritual challenges lie ahead? What is the relative reality of securing the energy supply, and persuading the Kurds not to join the anti-occupation revolt? By what standards should this reality be judged? Number of civilian deaths, number of dollars of reconstruction contracts awarded, or level of hassle to your good self?

Fresh from using that measure of most dubious constitutional status, the Parliamnet Act, to force through the foxhunting ban, the danglies have turned their eye to a different sort of fish altogether: pheasant shooting. This is different because the pheasant which are reared in the semi-wild are then shot for food, which foxes clearly are not. When asked why this was a more important target than battery farming, the animal rights lobby argue that shooting is wrong because people take pleasure from it. To get things in perspective, the number of battery chickens killed each year is in the hundreds of millions, the number of pheasants shot in the tens of thousands. The pheasants live wildly on managed estates, until they are induced into the air and shot in the hunting season. Both end up on food markets. The logical point of debate, which has been universally ignored is this: notwithstanding the fact that conditions for battery farmed animals are worse, is it better to produce animals for the food market in a way which gives some humans pleasure, or in a way which brings pleasure to nobody? The only possible opposition to shooting would be some kind of Victorian 'moral degeneration' argument, but in a world in which Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo Bay are the results of the export of "freedom" I think a few shooting toffs are of the least moral significance.

So come on animal rights campaigners. I challenge you all. I want to hear a logical, convincing representation of your position.

In about 1699 Venice suffered a terrible plague. The people of the city built a big Church to Madonna della Salute, and the plague went away. Every year everybody in the city crowds to the Church, buys a two Euro candle from a street vendor, and lights it in the church, which bestows on them good health for the next twelve months. It is much cheaper than the NHS or Bupa. It was a joy to see the legions of Italians pouring out of the Church and lighting cigarettes. Now thats what I call faith.

Finally, Big Ron is making his tentative steps down the comeback trail. He has astutely but indignantly pointed out that his sacking for calling Desailly "a f****** lazy n*****" would never have happened if he had used the word "Frog" instead. Not quite the penitent approach that trial by media demands, Ron...

"White girls shake your ass. Black girls shake your ass. Everybody shake your ass."

2004-11-19T14:25:00.000Z

The immortal words of the seemingly mortal Ol' Dirty Bastard of the Wu Tang Clan, who passed away this week. It seems he collapsed in his recording studio having taken large amounts of crack. Which is nearly a rock'n'roll death, but just not quite. Still, he died aged 35 leaving 13 children by an unknown number of mothers behind him, so perhaps a wierd Wu Tang style Wilson Phillips will follow eventually. Beloved of metal and rap fans in equal measure, the Clan will live in my memory for attracting some of the worlds scariest moshpits, and for being one of the few bands who could empty the floor at Hatfield's legendary Haunted Hangar.

The Beta Band are also drawing their last breaths, and Matt was lucky enough to catch up with their farewell tour in Cardiff. I guess they will never make that record every music journalist said they had in them. I like the material the singer has done as King Biscuit Time, though, so perhaps it isn't quite the end.

Being stuck in Italy will only MTV Europe and "AllMusic" to supplement the Cds we have over here forces you to listen to the European top 10 more than you might otherwise. Here is what I have learned.

1) Destiny's Child are very, very good at what they do.
2) Eminem will never become less annoying.
3) Manufactured pop can get in your head and stay there, with varied effects - Ashley Simpson is not harmful; Jojo is.
4) Anastacia is awful. Go away.
5) Nelly's duets with various people are always better than I expect them to be.
6) Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama are top of my wish list.

Si has joined the blogging community, so for everything you never knew you wanted to know, visit ukplc.

Finally, I just read Hamlet again. How the modern editions of the play came into being from the three main seventeenth century editions seems to be quite a mystery. It makes you wonder how worthwhile some of the analysis of the play as a 'work' is, whien the total text is only provisional. So speaks somebody who has been reading too much Ricoeur. Still, nearly finished. "Brick Lane" is next on the fiction list, which promises to be good.

Blogging thing

2004-11-17T13:34:00.000Z

It seems that since about 3rd November, links I have included in posts have not worked. They do now. Sorry.

Flags maps and museums

2004-11-16T13:43:00.000Z

I have been reading Ricoeur's "Time and Narrative", and it has led me to wonder about the place, if any, of nations in twenty first century geopolitics. There was a time, as the British Empire collapsed, when self-determination was tied to some degree to military might. We now live in a world where military might has exceeded itself; mutually assured destruction leaves military innovation essentially redundant. The Arab-Israeli conflict illustrates perfectly why nation states are not a workable solution to the world's problems. What kind of social world can be imagined and constructed for the twenty first century? The current problem is that matters of security have not been solved in situations where the state has broken down, as the recent histories of Russia and Rwanda would suggest. That the British government believes citizenship to be the missing element in British nationhood at the moment is illustrative of the problems in attempting to imagine an alternative state.

The problem is that states exist partly in order to consolidate themselves. As Hobsbawm pointed out, this is the function of universal state education. However, unlike in the time of Rousseau, there is no option to live outside the state. You are born into a socail contract which you cannot leave, less still dissolve.

The popularity and success of Sertorius' alternative state in Spain under nominal Roman control suggests that imperial powers can be resisted or subverted. Nevertheless, constructing a viable, attractive alternative to the nation state is not easy. It should not be forgooten that most nation states are very young. We cannot turn the clock back, but we can recognise that they do not represent a norm in the organisation of society. Thinking about where to begin constructing plausible alternative models is not easy, but until it happens, people will continue to massacre each other in large numbers all over the globe.

"Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed" - Pindar

2004-11-15T10:35:00.000Z

Here is a rather good Titian [Cain and Abel for the infidels] we found in a church. How the Old Testament should be: frightning.

I have read a few popular books recently, which is unusual for me. First up was Dan Brown's "The Davinci Code," which is to literature as Gilbert and Sullivan are to music. Next up was the "the Girl with the Pearl Earring" by somebody. It tried earnestlt to be good, but had all the hallmarks of somebody who had endlessly studied "write your own novel" handbooks. Oh, and I read a book Susie has called "PS I love you," which compared with the others has the relative merit of only aspiring to be the literary Hollyoaks, an ambition which it largely fulfills. And I read Bill Bryson's "History of Everything" or whatever it is called, but i don't like Bill Bryson anyway, and I have spent enough years with people who know a lot about Astrophysics, Biology and Paleoanthropology to know that most of it was pre-digested to the point of being useless anyway.

Spending Remembrance Sunday in Italy was remarkable only because they forgot. But then Venice's big hero is Francesco Morosini, whose grave inscription says (in Latin): "Here lies the bones of Francesco Morosini, Venetian emperor of the Peloponnesos." He is remembered for being the bloke who, with startling accuracy for the 17th century, fired a bloody big bomb into the Parthenon.

It did make me think, though, that the misplaced aspect of the Greek's whining about the Parthenon marbles is that were it not for the British/French/German Neoclassical Romantic movement, those stones would still lie where Morosini left them. Had the ancient world not be constructed as a cultural icon before the formation of a conciousness of modern Greek nationalism, it is unlikely it would ever have been appropriated as a pre-existing nationalist template. The comparison with the approach to the past of other areas with an equal heritage (eg Iraq and Afganistan) is enough to illustrate this.

Imagine a country where how and what you ate and drank was controlled by the government. Where visitors were taken on carefully managed tours, to shield them from public opinion. Where local authorities were competant to decide how people should dress in public. Where the government shamelessly manipulated the results of public votes.

Yesterday's Sunday Times carried the following stories:

1. Smoking is to banned in all restaurants and 80% of the floor area(!) of all pubs; Walkers crisps and others are to be banned from advertising on TV.

2. Dubya is to visit the UK before the next election. Will we see a repeat of last time when his tour was micromanaged to mask the existance of (massive) dissent. British citizens were not allowed to speak freely.

3. Local authorities have been given the power to ban people from wearing "hoodies", not because they can lead to "harder" fashion crimes like the mullet and the shellsuit, but because they are, it would seem, the germ from which sprouts anti-social behaviour. How perfectly, quaintly, Victorian.

4. Labour are looking for ways to not lose the referendum on the EU constitution. They have hit on the idea of allowing EU citizens living in Britain to vote. What majestic logic.

Anyway, it is not all bad. After all, the PM has supported the idea that some schools should be allowed to teach a creationist biology curriculum, on the basis that: " In the end, a more diverse school system will deliver better results for our children." Burk.

Come or the stellar tide will slip away

2004-11-10T16:28:00.000Z

Maybe God is an electron. My sub atomic physics aren't great, but all this stuff about being everywhere but nowhere... I had always wondered what quarks were. This term was coined as a cover all to simplify the mystifying spectrum of sub atomic particles. No less involved is the angel hierarchy. Perhaps they are the same thing.

Good the scientists and god bothers can bugger off and fight amongst themselves.

The astute will already have spotted the Venetian connection in today's title. Ezra Pound is buried on the frankly wierd cemetary island here. It is currently invisible from my window, due to a disgusting blustery storm. Winter is here at last. The Italian news has been full, for reasons I find hard to discern, of a young lady called Claudia Pandolfi. I have no idea who she is, but still, to warm the cockles of my legions of readers, and make up for the fact that the only women yet to feature has been the frankly knarly (unless you are Rick) Claire Ward...

Oh, and far less excitingly, we will be gracing England with our presence from 21st to 30th December.

How Imperialism Works

2004-11-04T14:38:00.000Z

GPS is great. It lets you bugger off to the Artic, get horribly lost, and then get found quickly when you are cold or bored. It was developed by the US military, who let civvies use it for free. Why? To prevent anybody else needing to develop a rival system. So should they end up in a tricky warfare situation (think Vietnam) they have the aid of this capability, and they can block the signal to the enemy, giving them an edge.

The EU is a trading conglomeration which some European countries allow to dictate various laws and crazy rules. It doesn't want to fight the US. It does have (far) more money than sense. So it is developing an alternative to GPS called Galileo, which will be better than GPS and not have any military involvement.

The US are cross, and are already warning that if they suspect Galileo is being used by terrorists (aka enemies of America) they will blow up the satellites. If you want to know how scary these people are look at this extraordinary policy document, produced by the US military, and called Vision2020. It includes the frightning assertion that: "The medium of space is the fourth medium of warfare, along with land, sea and air...Space superiority is essential." Yikes!

Bookworms

2004-11-04T08:59:00.001Z

While I was cooking last night a large blob of hot oil jumped from the pan onto my arm. It is now black and blistered and spiky painful, dammit. News of Tom's Eccle's cakes disaster makes me wonder whether British students head for foreign climbs somewhat ill equipped for providing for themselves. I never did Home Ec at school.

I finished reading "The Age of Consent" about a week ago. Simon, having only read the first fifty pages was right about it: Monbiot is a good critic but a rubbish visionary. The first half is entertaining polemic, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

I'd like to read everybody else's favourite book. So I have created a guestbook where people can post reading suggestions and comments about books they have read, or one's other people have mentioned. In return, I will read as many recommended books as I can get my hands on in this foreign place.

"The real problem is what to do with the problem-solvers after the problems are solved." Gay Talese

2004-11-03T13:42:00.000Z

Simon sent me this email. I feel the need to add nothing:

"This just appeared on the FT website:Blair targets chewing gum spittersBy Simon Briscoe in LondonPublished: November 2 2004 18:38 Last updated: November 2 2004 18:38

In a fresh sign that action against anti-social behaviour will play a vital part in the next UK general election, Tony Blair's government on Tuesday identified a new target in the effort to clean-up the country the nation's 28m gum chewers, or at least those who discard gum “inappropriately”. The target was revealed in a 160-page government-commissioned report that divides offenders into those who know it is wrong to drop gum, do it discreetly and feel guilty for doing so and hard-line miscreants the so-called “Bravado” group, who enjoy “spitting and kicking” used gum with little regard for its impact on the environment.

The research says a range of solutions is required to tackle the problem. Specially designed “fun bins” with targets or the supply of cigarette-type papers will work for some it says, while advertising and better education could harness the “guilt and revulsion” of others. The department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says the deployment of chemicals, machines spraying water jets and even lasers, to clear up gum costs authorities “many millions” of pounds. Peter Gibson of the charity Keep Britain Tidy says each local authority receives an average of 1,600 complaints a year from the public amounting to over 500,000 in England and Wales last year. However the British government will be aware that when Singapore introduced an outright ban on the sale of gum in 1992 it was ridiculed. The city-state was forced to reverse the decision to allow the marketing of gum meant for dental hygiene or as an anti-smoking aid./
Additional reporting by Jack Burton in Singapore.///

A quick visit here http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/localenv/litter/index.htm will reveal that in October 2003, a "Chewing gum action group" was formed by Defra. You can view the entire 160-page report these bozos have generated from that page, and see how the Gum Droppers Segmentation Survey has evolved since January.

It's lucky comment is unnecessary, because I am literally speechless. Si."

It's immoral to send someone so young

2004-11-02T13:47:00.001Z

"It's immoral to send someone so young." So said Samira Abdullah, the grief stricken mother of Amar al-Far, a 16 year old Palestinian who blew himself up in Tel Aviv on Monday, killing three and injuring 32 others. In response the Israelis have razed his house. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3974557.stm. This just about sums up the intractibility of the situation. While having every sympathy with Palestinian claims to an independant territory, the route there will take more than a roadmap to find it. If Tony Blair really wants to leave an international legacy, a mutually accepted solution to this situation is where he should be focusing his attentions.

If you think the US elections are becoming a farcical mess, it is nothing compared with the Ukranian elections. You couldn't make it up. http://www.taraskuzio.net/elections2004/elections2004.html

MPs were due to vote today on a total ban on smacking. However, the government has supported an amendment, which means they are now going to ban only smacking which causes bruises or mental harm.

On 12th June 2003 Alan Milburn, then Health Secretary, quit the cabinet to spend more time with his children. Just over a year later, he has had enough of home life, and is back to mastermind Labour's election campaign.

Could these two stories be connected? I really do think we should be told...

More hair than wit, and more faults than hairs

2004-10-28T09:43:00.000+01:00

Right, I have lots of little things on my mind today. The main one may prove to be the death of John Peel. But before that I thought I would include this link, which the queenofsky attracted my attention to. Is Dubya considering compulsary conscription if re-elected?http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/defendamerica-draftboards.htm

Farewell then John Peel. Great voice; funny taste in music (early Kylie!?!) Is it me, or are people dying younger. All the recent deaths I can remember are: Peel (65); Derrida (74); Superman (52); Johnny Ramone (55); Brando (80). That's an average of 65.2. Which is a bit of a worry. Mind you, they may not represent the most healthy demographic: one fat bastard, a nutter, a shattered superhero, a Frenchman and a Kylie fan.

They have found a new species of midgets in Indonesia. [No sensible web links exist right now, but I will put one in if I find it.] Today's Nature reports that bones have been found of three foot hominid type creatures, who are being provisionally named Homo Floriniensis. They lived on the island of Flores up to 12000 years age, the end of the last ice age. To put this in perspective, proper modern humans reached Australia over 40000 years ago. This little island, Flores, also had mini elephants, which is quite cool. However, this categorisation of the species will not last long. I know from my scull fondling days in the UCL Anthropology department the rough typology of hominid sculls. There is nothing about these little folk that suggests they should be "Homo" anything, despite the fact that they may have descended from Homo Erectus. They are to "human" as hedgehog is to rhino. So don't believe the silly hype about "hobbits" being found. Chris Stringer at the BM was quoted as saying "This makes us question what makes us human." No it doesn't Chris. It reinforces the difference between our species and other types of ape. Anyone who still thinks that tool use and hunting in groups makes these critters in some way "human" needs to read Jane Goodall's research into chimpanzees. Even language is not a great indicator. If it is established that they cooked, though, which looks possible, this discovery will become even more interesting.

I saw TB in the press vowing to crack the crime wave blighting Blighty. Tone, even if their was a crime wave (and I'm not sure, to be honest), do you really think we trust you to defeat it. Your last crime cracking bright idea involved frogmarching offenders to cashpoints, didn't it? Get back in your box, your funny little fellow.

Hanging with Chad

2004-10-27T11:26:00.000+01:00

A few days ago, John Kerry's hopes of reaching the Oval office seemed to be falling faster than a liar's grin. Today, it seems, the outcome could hinge on just one state. Florida. Provided Kerry holds Pennsylvania, he needs Florida for victory. http://www.electoral-vote.com Voting has already started in Florida, and chaos is already unfolding. http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/election2004/10022158.htm?1c. Although Florida has rid itself of chadding machinery, several other states still emloy it, including, I believe, Ohio, which has already been corrupted by media intrusion from John Bull, perched on Uncle Sam's shoulder. It looks a rosy winter for the families of lawyers across America.

Meanwhile, in Italy, controversy has been stirred by EU attempts to block the appointment of Rocco Buttiglione as EU Justice Commissioner. All was going well for Prof. Butttiglione until his preliminary interview a few weeks ago. “All are free to call me a bigot and intolerant, but I very freely define homosexual behaviours as an indicator of moral disorder,” Buttiglione opined. “The family exists in order to allow women to have children and to have the protection of a male who takes care of them. This is the traditional vision of marriage that I defend.” One can only imagine the reaction of the lefty Europeans to this kind of thing.And to add to the fun, the Pope stepped in with quote of the century, likening attempts to block the appoinment of Buttiglione to a "new inquisition." Now, I don't like to split hairs, JP, but do we really think you, the Pope, have chosen the best metaphor? Go on, think about it. Hosanna!

Operation Clark County

2004-10-26T16:10:00.000+01:00

Thirteen days ago, some Guardian journalists went for an after work brainstorm in "a north London pub" http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1326033,00.html and came up with the bright idea of attempting to deny what used to be called in the good old days the "self-determination" of the American people by persuading floating voters to give birth to "JFK MkII" rather than "Bushy" chads.

Richard Dawkins, the professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford has always seemed like a right muppet. Now his "letter to America" has proved it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1326066,00.html Burk. Many Americans were rightly outraged (see http://timblair.spleenville.com/ from 13/10 onwards for how all this panned out.) Actually Tim Blair reckons they nicked the idea from him anyway http://timblair.spleenville.com/archives/007570.php.

All this just goes to prove what a pathetic bunch are the natural fibre wearing, celery munching, soul searching, heart aching, slow marching, tambourine waving, anally retaining, micro managing (I could go on but would just end up with the lyrics to the next Beck single. You get the idea...) "liberal" "left" that has taken root in Britain. They seem to fall into two main groups. the first are the dangling earring brigade: those middle aged women who worry about the moral decay of society. I mean, moral decay? I thought we had established that midget tossing was the answer. the other group are richer, and include more men. The treatment given to this group by Rory Bremner, the only funny thing left in his repetoire (although to be fair his Blair is more imprinted in my mind than the real one), needs no further comment. To have developed into a movement large enough to have its own newspaper, and to get 48,000 people to apply for the addresses of innocent civilians represents they kind of disgusting Claire Shortism that is so happy about post apocalypse Britain. 9/11? Do me a favour! 1/5/97 was the day the four horsemen rode into town: Mandleson, Balls, Blunkett and Giddens are the architects of this itchy new existence. You thought Howard was bad? That was before you realised that "New" Labour would legislate to control minds in a way too crazy to believe. You can't be a civil servant and a member of the BNP? Never would I have believed that a fascist social worker would seem so appealing. Not that I feel much like voting for the Tories, but "withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy". I hope anyone who votes "New" labour on 5th May chokes on their Ryvita.

More Claire Ward

2004-10-22T13:53:00.000+01:00

Just noticed she was educated at Loreto, the Catholic convent school in St. Albans, whose alumni include my sister and her out of Shakespeares Sister. This explains a lot!

Public violence

2004-10-22T13:32:00.000+01:00

British universities stop working on Wednesday afternoons so that we students can participate in violent sporting activity http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uczxfen/clubinfo.htm. In Venice, Friday afternoon is free, and the students drink, shout and enjoy ritualistic violence in large groups all afternoon. In the USA and Sweden the fraternities and sorieties torture initiands. http://www.sensations4women.com/frat/. One of the great achievements of Emile Durkheim (pictured) was to explain how all societies have a "normal" level of antisocial behaviour, exemplified at length in his monograph on suicide. Similarly, a certain level of public violence is common to all societies, and should not necessarily be considered "a bad thing." In Britain, there has never been a co-ordinated, progressive policy towards the regulation of public violence. Public flogging for women was banned in 1805; bear baiting was banned in 1835, but the last public hanging was not until 1875; hanging was not restricted until 1965; and not abolished entirely (for treason and piracy) until 27th January 1999! Corporal punishment in (non-state) schools was illegal as of 1st September 1999. Foxhunting has just been banned, leaving only fishing as the UK's last bloodsport.

Some people claim that public violence in Britain has been replaced by private media, especially computer games. Films, which are enjoyed somewhat publically, are closely regulated, especially in the wake of the James Bulger murder, which some blamed in part on violent films. Now, computer games are more violent than films, and "Doom" is cited as inspiring the form of a massacre in an American school a few years ago. I find it hard to accept that this amounts to the same thing. It would be interesting to know whether "alcohol-related violence" has genuinely increased in recent years in Britain. Perhaps the high street on a Friday night has become the modern amphitheatre, an experience enhanced by its participatory nature. If so, the government should act before it is too late. Britain needs well regulated public violence; though care should be taken when choosing the form. One possibility is to extend opportunities for shooting farm animals (see 20/10/04) to members of the public. I think bird shooting is still legal in Britain, which may mean shooting is too classy to be widely accepted by the lumpen proletariat ("social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society" as Marx so charmingly characterises them. See http://www.chavscum.co.uk/ for how the other side lives now). Another alternative is the ever popular sport of midget tossing. Play for yourself: http://www.fetchfido.co.uk/games/midget_tossing/midget_tossing.htm. Does watching Paula Radcliffe run marathons perhaps qualify? Anyway, all suggestions welcome, and I would encourage inundating my useless MP Claire Ward with massive amounts of correspondance on this and any other strikingly impotant issue.

If you wish to contact Claire Ward MP:
you can call on (01923) 213579 Fax: (01923) 213595
or write to her at:
270 St Albans RoadWatfordWD24 6PE
or House of CommonsPhone: 020 7219 4910 Fax:020 7219 0468Pager: 020 8345 6789 then quote 880045Mobile: 0468 901606
or write to her at:
The House of Commons Westminister London SW1A 0AA.
or you can e-mail her at: wardc@parliament.uk

Football heaven

2004-10-21T14:29:00.000+01:00

We went to the local Irish themed pub last night, and discovered Inter vs Valencia on the telly. Then we discovered Arsenal on another telly. Then we discovered AC Milan vs Barcalona on another telly.

We spent the evening in the middle of the bar, watching Arsenal, with Inter fans on one side and AC fans on the other, all drinking, cheering, and eyeing each other with suspicion. I'm glad both Milan teams won!!!

A lasting solution for world peace

2004-10-20T14:47:00.000+01:00

I am reading "The age of Consent" by George Monbiot. Only twenty pages in, I had come up with a simple way of ensuring world peace. First of all, there are three times as many farm animals in the world as people. Second, the average American eats 88 times as many calories per day as the average Bangladeshi. Number C, 50 million people have died in war since 1945: compare with the mere 8 million who died in WW1. iv) There is a global surplus of food but lots of people can't afford it (one third of the world's people live on less than 1$ per day). Feeding all those farm animals keeps prices high. "So what?" I hear you cry. Well, it is all very simple. Wars aim to damage the powerful in other states by killing the poor. Generals like killing. The obvious solution is for warring countries to agree not to shoot people, but cows and sheep. There would be far more killing for armies to do. The losers would become poor and have to buy food from the winners. The poor in the losing country would have more fruit+veg to eat. And, to throw in a little bonus, global warming would be controlled, providing the gunpowder causes less trouble than the cow farts.

Simple! I don't know why this solution hasn't been reached before. Anyone got Koffi Anan's email?

In my fit of inspiration, I also realised what is wrong with British democracy. Failure is too lucrative (Major, Kinnock, Hague to name just a few). An important facet of Athenian democracy was that failed politicians were punished. The Athenians used to just kick them out. My solution is better: recycling. Any politician who is deemed by the electorate of his constituency at the end of his term not to have done what he was mandated to do should be stripped of all assets, and used as a dinner lady in a bog standard comprehensive. That'll teach 'em! The thought of Blair slopping out baked beans at Brixton High until his seventieth birthday fills me with zealous glee.

Exhuming Macarthy (again); rogue neighbours and the US election outcome

2004-10-19T16:52:00.000+01:00

The US election is open to all manner of capricious intervention, but the view from Europe suggests Kerry is now in a very strong position. Funnily enough, I suspect the coverage of 'key states' may be concentrating on the wrong ones. Much has been made of the possible influence of new voters, particularly those who have registered but cannot be polled as they do not have or do not answer landlines. The consensus is that Bush needs a slight lead in states like Florida to soak up this unpolled, supposedly Democrat vote. In my view, these marginal states are as close as they look and will be a fairly fair split. To win one party needs to spring a surprise somewhere. How about Bush in Pennsylvania? Worth (I think) 21 college votes, and polled as being marginaly Democrat, it strikes me as one of the few states where the previously unmobilsed vote may spring a surprise by voting Democrat. Here, perhaps, the approach to public spending proposed by Bush (highly centralised education budgeting etc) may seem both more stable and less "nannying" than the impression given by the Kerry spending plan. To win either side needs to control some "swing" states like Iowa, but ultimately a surprise elsewhere could be decisive...

The disappearance of an anti Daily Mail rant was caused by a naughty neighbour divulging his darkest desires in the comments section. They're not all locked up yet...

As we smirk at Putin outlawing swearing <http://www.inebriantia.org/2003/10/russia_makes_sw.html>, perhaps of real concern should be his reversal of the burden of proof for terrorist trials (for an endearingly bonkers Christian critique of such ideas: http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/nl130.htm). Not intending to bang on about his constitutional changes (lets worry about Blair first http://www.deadbrain.co.uk/news/article_2003_06_18_0358.php for a spoofy version) it is worth thinking about how the US will react to Putin's retreat into isolationism. The nation is simply too big for the US not to worry about, and positioned, as it is near countries more barmy than Afganistan - have a look at Turkmenistan among others - it is likely to be of economic as well as anti-terrorist interest. American interests in central asia makes for interesting reading. http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa48119.000/hfa48119_0f.htm. Meanwhile, we have a Labour-Republican alliance, the Tories want the Democrats to win, and not even the Tories can make a coherent statement of a smaller govenment ideal. Should a referendum on Europe ever come, the UK will stick 2 fingers up at the EU, whose borders are about to be closer to Russia than we are used to. The map of international alliance is being redrawn in the most dramatic way since 1989. It is impossible to believe tensions will not result, and the question is: who will be the new "reds under the bed"? While we are shoulder to shoulder with the US of A, this is a question that matters quite a lot.

Bush or Chimp?

2004-10-15T15:12:00.000+01:00

Simon provided me with the new URL: http://www.ajokes.com/jokes/936.html

Another one bites the dust...

2004-10-13T11:14:00.000+01:00

So Derrida follows hot(?) on Said's heels. Perhaps that great second generation of postwar philosophers has burnt itself out. I can't see Hobsbawm kicking the bucket just yet though... It seems fitting that no two obituaries carry the same reading of Derrida's "theories". Still, at least the social sciences might at last turn their eye to Ricoeur.

Arrival in Venice

2004-10-12T16:13:00.000+01:00

To all and every who come to see my rambling record... I have arrived in Venice. It is a most confusing city, a confusion which is exacerbated by the refusal to incorporate street names in postal addresses. The university has no campus. The main building has been abandoned since it is about to collapse into the Canale Grande. This means that the university consists of obscured entrances, and winding staircases; libraries squashed onto the sides of corridors, and offices in residential courtyards. It is unlike anything I have come across in England, although I suppose if you imagine Oxford forced to moved in its entirity to the conservation area of St Albans you would get the idea...