2007 - Year in Review

No posts on here from now until the middle of the next week, so here is my review of the year for next year. Hopefully today's good news in Iraq will mean a better one there at least.

January 1st
Political commentators and MPs expressed befuddlement at a passage in Tony Blair's New Year's Address in which he praised the Romans, in particularly their achievements in the the Year 46BC.

January 2nd
Concern grew at Tony Blair's mental state after he followed up his "Roman" speech by one arguing that "The world could learn a lot from Jupiter.

January 4th
Sources close to the Chancellor let it be known that "Gordon is not going to fall for that one" and that he believed a year is "365 days, and no more".

January 9th
Melanie Phillips wrote a Daily Mail column about social policy in Britain in which she noted the issues are complex and many good people hold differing views on what should be done. Therefore, she added, it is hard to know which policy option is right, and she offered the suggestion that a wide range of views should be canvassed and a consensus emerge. Whatever the outcome no-one should be left out of the process or condemned for their opinions, she concluded.

January 17th
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which gained 2000 signatures in its first three weeks.

January 31st
The Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society announced the Top Dog Index, an anual ranking of the World's Most Powerful Nations (Unquestionably). The 2006 rankings are 1. United Kingdom (+1), 2. United States (-1), 3. Canada (flat), 4. Australia, 5. Ireland, 6. New Zealand, 7. South Africa, 8. Gibraltar, 9. Pitcairn Islands, 10. Shetland Islands.

February 2nd
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which gained 1500 signatures in its first three weeks.

February 14th
Melanie Phillips announced she is leaving the Daily Mail in protest at its "narrow-minded and bigoted attitude, in particularly towards Muslims." She also declared it to be "run by a Jewish cabal". She is to take over Robert Fisk's job on The Independent.

March 1st
Nick Cohen announced he is leaving The Observer for 'new pastures'.

March 3rd
Nick Cohen joined the Daily Mail with the tagline - "He hates the Left - do you?". His first column attacks traffic wardens, comprehensive schools and the Olympics.

March 5th
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which got 1,250 signatures in three weeks.

March 27th
Tony Blair announced he has changed the locks on 10 Downing Street as a 'precuation in these troubled times'.

April 9th
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which gained 1000 signatures in its first three weeks.

April 18th
Baroness Thatcher issued a statement saying she planned to take up an unpaid internship at the Darlington-based Peter Cuthbertson Centre for Free Markets and abandonment of the State Pension.

April 29th
In response to a request from Alan 'Not the Minister' Johnson for their signature on a document, Nick Cohen 'denounced the shame-faced appeasement of the British left', Stephen Pollard noted that 'the enemy has shown its face, and it is the British left', and Peter Tatchell declared that 'this day will go down as one of infamy due to the British left'. Islington Friends Meeting House said that they think that sufficed as an affirmation under English contract law to hire the venue out for an evening.

May 5th
Speaking after Labour were reduced to 2 council seats in the local elections, Tony Blair declared he had "one more war in him" and pleaded to be allowed to remain in office. Downing Street later claimed he was misheard and said "one more year".

May 6th
A surprisingly upbeat Tony Blair resigned as Labour leader after ten years as Prime Minister, and made a statement that "there is a great candidate with loads of experience, everyone knows I want him to win, and he will win".

May 7th
A shock in the Labour leadership contest as unknown MP, Anthony Booth, who represents the constituency of Sedgefield, announced he is to challenge the hot favourite, Chancellor, Gordon Brown, for the Labour leadership job. Booth, married to Cherie Blair QC, said he planned to campaign on a platform of opposition to "Brown's War on Iraq" and the Chancellor's "continual debasing reforms of public services".

May 12th
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which gained 700 signatures in its first three weeks.

June 7th
Britain gained a new Prime Minister, Anthony Booth, as he defeated favourite Gordon Brown by 200 votes. He appointed Brown his Chancellor and promised a 'Cool Brittania'. Peter Mandelson was appointed to the Cabinet.

June 8th
Articles appeared in the newspapers about 'the growing rift between the new Prime Minister and his Chancellor'.

June 17th
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which gained 500 signatures in its first three weeks.

July 1st
The Henry 'Scoop' Jackson Society issued a press release on the 10th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese demanding that Britain - 'unquestionably the second-most powerful nation in the world' - grab it back. They also demanded greater funding for Boeing.

July 12th
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which gained 250 signatures in its first three weeks.

July 24rd
Scientists revealed that Tim Worstall had now written more words on his blog in 2007 alone than had been written in all of human history up to 1827.

August 13th
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which gained just 50 signatures in its first three weeks.

September 1st
The commenters on the Guardian's Comment is Free complained about the standards of the journalist's posts, and demand some kind of registration system to 'keep the loons out'.

September 15th
Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson launched a new Decency project, which gained just 5 signatures in its first three weeks.

September 22nd
Scientists revealed that Tim Worstall had now written more words on his blog in 2007 alone than had been written in all of human history up to 1887.

October 31st
There was puzzlement in the Blogosphere at the lack of a new Decency project from Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson.

November 30th
There were growing concerns over the health of Alan "Not the Minister" Johnson due to his failure to launch a new Decency project for the second month in a row. Supporters began an all-night vigil in front of their computer screens. Peter Tatchell wrote 2,000 words in Comment Is Free declaring his outrage at the lack of condemnation of those responsible for his disappearance.

December 1st
Nick Cohen's column on Melanie Phillips blog failed to appear.

December 3rd
The number of posts on Harry's Place appearing in previous week fell to 767, its lowest in history.

December 7th
Oliver Kamm announced he will not be posting again in December.

December 8th
Oliver Kamm wrote a 3,500 word post on Noam Chomsky's latest book. He then announced he will not be posting again in December.

December 12th
John Lloyd's column in the FT failed to appear. Rumours that it was because he thought it too morally good for the reading public were denied by the FT editor on the grounds that if that reason was allowed the column would never appear.

December 13th
Scientists now believe Tim Worstall has written more words on his blog in 2007 than in recorded history. They say they are checking their models.

December 15th
There were joyous scenes at the news that Alan Johnson and a number of other members of the Decent Left are alive. However neutral bystanders expressed concern at the group's statement that they had taken over a small and remote island in the Atlantic and planned to use it as a base to "make the world Decent", using a new 'Decency Ray', which had the power to destroy the entire planet (in order to save it) in less than five minutes. Hilarious bloggers pointed out that they thought Tony Blair had already done that. Sober heads said that as long as it keeps the group busy and out of their hair, it's OK with them. The plan for "World Decency Domination" gets 2,750 signatures in three weeks.

December 16th
Joyous scenes subside in confusion when it is realised that in fact it is Alan Johnson, the Cabinet Minister and Trade Unionist, who plans to take over the world from an island base, and not Alan 'Not the Minister' Johnson, who apparently has just been working on another loyalty oath which has so far gained no signatures.

Callaghan, economic troubles and Nukes

Oliver notes in this post that:

Ford worked with two Prime Ministers, one of them appalling (Harold Wilson) and one, in my minority view, good and underrated (James Callaghan). Wilson - a man of colossal vanity who was convinced he was held in high regard in Washington - wrote to Ford in October 1974 in effect giving an ultimatum that Britain would make defence cuts regardless of the damage to Nato's capabilities. Ford responded with a measured statement of fact, worrying about the effect on US allies and expressing the hope that the US would not be the only power capable of international intervention. When Callaghan sought Ford's assistance in the sterling crisis of 1976 - a long story, much recounted, in which I consider that Callaghan and his Chancellor, Denis Healey, performed with credit and to the lasting benefit of the country - the President immediately offered to help.

New government documents released today (about 20 years too late) appear (at least on the Guardian's reporting) to refine this story - Callaghan might have also made a similar threat:

As telephone transcripts released today show, Callaghan used the questions over Britain's Nato commitment in an attempt to win American and German support to press the IMF to come up with more flexible terms for the loan. He told President Gerald Ford that without an IMF solution "we would be forced into action which would put at risk this country's contribution as an ally and a partner in the western alliance".

Trident

I'll post a comment I made over at Jamie's:

I'm strangely optimistic about Trident's replacement, or moreover, it not happening. A lot has been made about the lack of controversy over replacing it compared with that of the early 1980s. But there seems also a lack of controversy about scrapping it too. This might reflect general political apathy, or just that the support/opposition for it is spread more evenly across the polical classes.

In the end I think it'll be like ID cards - popular (ish) until the cost is known, and then given a choice of the carriers or the subs they'll go for the carriers.

Live Blogging - AaroWatch

I've got a lead here on the (briliant) boys at Aaronovitch Watch. I've just watched (in fact it might still be on - it certainly seems like it) a programme celebrating that pretty dull programme, University Challenge. Anyway, as you might imagine, it's terribly self-congratulatory, and given Ian Hislop and Steven Fry are two of the talking-heads (and I've just seen the Private Eye team, Hislop, Wheen, Booker (Brooker?) and the other one - Stars by Simply Red for someone who can come up with worse people to be stuck in a lift with), at times almost unbearable. On the other good hand it had Aaro trying to defend his unfunny stint on the programme, when I think he and his team answered every question with the name of a member of Marx Brothers (he is still going on about it being an attack on the Establishment or something like that, which is interesting from someone who today is one of Britain's most Establishment journalists). The exciting bit, and forgive the bad photographs of my TV screen, is the picture of Aaro as a young man! Here's Old (note he's not wearing some strange Invisible Man mask in real life, I'm not sure where that's come from) and Young Aaro!





ps My god, it is still going on. They're raving about a film version now.

Cricket

Surely this is a bit over the top?

England coach Duncan Fletcher has come in for criticism throughout the tour over matters of selection and preparation, and Close believes it is now time for him to leave the post.

"I think he is past his sell-by date," he added. "In our day we didn't need coaches. If you played for England you were supposed to be a good player and didn't need coaches."

Latest Sweepstake News

On the question of how many more words would Oliver Kamm blog more than he said he would in December, the runners and riders were as follows (when OK was on 10,740):

10,740 - Backword Dave
16,000 - Nick
20,000 - Dsquared
22,000 - John Angliss
28,000 - Ross
45,000 - Sahra

As of 9pm on the 28th December, with just three full days to go, the current total is:

15,085.

This means Nick looks highly likely to win, unless Oliver comes up with another 2,916 words.

Christmas Alcohol

I have been thinking about wine, and in particularly Australian branded wine, such as the standard UK versions of Jacobs Creek or Wolf Blass. I have decided that these drinks are not wine. I don't mean that in the snobbish sense that our upside-down cousins obviously have not the skill or heritage to make wine, or good wine, as I actually like the stuff very much indeed. I just mean that I think if you crave a glass of red wine, they don't really satisfy you, and perhaps that is because they should be seen as a different type of drink, more akin to a non-fizzy, relatively sophisticated, alcopop. One can, and I do, often crave a glass of this too, in which case a glass of 'wine' wine wouldn't work. But I'm not sure its the same thing (this applies to similar 'wines' from any country).

In fact, I think this might apply to champagne too, and perhaps is in fact how it is viewed. One can really not want a glass of white wine, yet want a glass of Champage - another 'wine' that is mass-produced, quality controlled. On this subject, I really recommend Corney and Barrow's (the shop, not the braying wine bars) Blanc de Blancs sparkling wine, which is about 1/3rd the price of Champagne and tastes just as good (Blanc de Blancs means it is made using only white Chardonnay grapes, whereas most standard Champagne also uses red Pinot Noir grapes).

Blair and the Bee Gees

Surely the news in this story is not that Blair's plane missed a turn on the runway, but that he is spending the festive period with Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees?!

I am a Real Man!

I now own a cordless power drill.

Christmas Day, 2006, 11:00am

We leave the house, and close the front door which locks behind us.

"Have you got the keys?"
"No, I thought you had them"
"No"
"Oh"
"Where's the spare set?"
"In my other bag in the house"
"Oh"

The only good thing was we had the car keys and the presents. Remarkably (though appparently it is relatively common) there are locksmiths who can turn up within an hour to get you back in. But, sensibly, they do rather charge for it.

Happy Christmas

This feels a bit wrong, but I'm trying to get something to work on the computer (which has run out of USB ports) and so I'll take the time to say 'Happy Christmas'.

Tim Worstall - we really are not worthy - is still posting about Paul Krugman. Maybe they celebrate later in Portugal. I'll point out that this post is wrong, at least in England, as Christmas Day is not a shopping day, so there are at most 364 shopping days to go and you could argue about some of those. I hope its not a leap year next year.

World of Books

Rather amusing piece in the Sunday Times on bad literary goings-on.

Royal Navy 'face tinpot future'...

...declares Admiral Sir Alan West, as rumours swirl that the MOD is going to scrap the aircraft carrier programme. The problem with the programme, I imagine, is that no-one at the MOD believes it is going to cost the stated cost of £3.7bn or whatever it is.

Terrorism

'[Islamic terrorism] is a far graver threat in terms of civilians than either the Cold War or the Second World War,'

said Sir Ian Blair, last week. I can't find the entire speech for the context, but on the face of it given around 50,000 civilians died over the Second World War's six years in London alone (43k in first Blitz, more than 7k in 'mini-Blitz', a weekly death toll twice as high as the July 2007 bombings) he's either talking nonsense, or he is referring to atomic weapons. I'm not even sure the mass attacks on aircraft would get you there.

David Irving

Rod Liddle worries that David Irving has been made a 'martyr to free speech' by his imprisonment in Austria. I don't really buy this - a martyr to who? Just the normal Nazis and racists, and perhaps Iranian crackpots. Big deal. He also adds:

But then, this. He was a British subject, arrested abroad and imprisoned for what we might reasonably call a crime of conscience. During his incarceration, his seriously ill wife — she is bed-ridden 90% of the time — and 12-year-old daughter were left to fend for themselves with no income. Irving has been, as he puts it, financially ruined. The British government encouraged prosecution. The campaigning groups — Amnesty, et al — refused to get involved.

As unfortunate as his wife and daughter's situation is, this is not normally seen as the fault of the imprisoning authorities, and given Irving must have known his arrest was possible, seems nothing but his fault.

2006 Review of Matt T Blog year - Jan to June

Truth be told, not a vintage year. Here's the first half.

January 2006

Nothing, sorry.

February 2006
2nd: Alcohol aides night drivers, declares a 1950s textbook.
5th: Dan's favourite singer, Mick Hucknall, discusses politics.
12th: I transform Tony Blair using a new face-transforming website.

March 2006
8th: I attack an Alice Thompson column as the 'most self pitying' I have ever read.
18th: And then Gerard Baker comes along and beats her.
29th: I take issue with Oliver Kamm's positive obituary for Casper Weinberger, and argue that Iran-Contra negates everything else.

April 2006
12th: "As if I were a black trying to purchase food in a Mississippi diner in 1955" - yes it can only be Carol Gould trying to buy a drink in a London pub.
18th: The Euston Manifesto arrives! I create a handy cut out and keep guide to which project each British Decent has signed up to, and criticise the manifesto on two grounds - first the whinge about a lack of media coverage given many of them are senior people in the media, and second, their criticism of other people for spending more time attacking the domestic left and not enough time helping Iraqis, given this seems exactly what they do. Looking back I think this latter criticism is really why I could never give it a chance - I am still shocked by Nick Cohen, Stephen Pollard and Peter Tatchell's reaction to being asked to 'unite against terror' and I think it says a lot about them (though Tatchell did apologise subsequently for his).
30th: Pollard goes one better, declaring in his Maida Vale Manifesto, which still has less than 10 signatories, that "The mainstream Left has demonstrated clearly which side of the battle to preserve Western civilisation and freedom it is on. The Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy". I ask whether he is calling for the arrest of leading left-wing figures.

May 2006
9th: YouGOV pay me my £50!
17th: In Rome, and I tell the hotel receptionist "Excuse me the phone in our room doesn't work". She replies,"This is Italy. Many things don't work."
30th: I prove President Bush is not as unpopular as the polls suggest.

June 2006
12th: I show that the Serie A is not the goal desert commentators think it is.

The sheer "affrontery" of the disrespectful

From The Sun, August 1997:

Hol family's hate mail

CRIPPLED Carl Bullman has been sent hate mail after taking his family on holiday on the day of Princess Diana's funeral.

A poison pen fiend also accuses him of "affrontery" in cleaning his car the day before the service. The writer called him "thoughtless and ignorant" adding: "Everyone's in mourning. You mock her."

Carl, 39, and wife Tina watched part of the service before setting off with their three children for North Wales. He even pulled over to observe the minute's silence.

Police are quizzing neighbours in Bloxwich, West Mids. Carl said: "The holiday was booked weeks ago. We weren't being disrespectful to Diana. Like everyone we were heartbroken."

Ashes over

Well the bet didn't quite pay off... At about 7am on Sunday morning it was looking very good, with the odds on England falling to 7-1. Then McGrath got two wickets, and it all looked bad again. The smug feeling of having got 10-1 on England winning is rather deflated when you see you could now get 22-1 and rising. 29.

England lost quite convincly in the end, though not quite as bad as in the first test. Then Australia scored 804 for 11, beating 527 for 20. In the second they got 681 for 14, having beaten 680 for 16, and in the final test they got 771 for 15, to which we could only reply with 565 for 20.

In total the figures are a rather stark 2256/40 plays 1772/54, an average (batting, but reverse it to get bowling) of 56.4 for them, and just 32.8 for us. We were probably unluckier with the umpiring decisions, particularly with Andrew Strauss, but overall you can't escape the conclusion that they played better.

Update: I changed England's 2nd test score and the aggregate score after Simon, in the comments, pointed out that we only lost 16 wickets in the 2nd test. The first innnings was (mistakenly, with hindsight) declared after 6 wickets had fallen.

The Dome finds a purpose

Diamond Geezer is rightly sceptical of some of the claims, but an entertainment venue was clearly the best option for getting something out of the Dome and if it opens in July 2007 looking more or less like this then it should be a success.

Flash Earth

This is good. It lets you compare all the online satellite image services.

Royal hagiographies

Sarah Bradford's King George VI is worse than her Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. I'm quite willing to believe he had some qualities - the way in which he rescued the Monarchy after the disasters of the Abdication, an interest in the lives of his subjects that went beyond the vague awareness they existed of George V, his support in wartime for the Prime Minister. But this book seems to imply he had hardly any defects, with a lot of over-the-top puffery ('his Royal memory' - ie he remembered something about a person he'd met before) - and any faults he did have, such as his horrendous temper, are often passed off as amusing Royal quirks.

One particular instance is illustrative. Any royal biography that covers the reign of Edward VIII will tell you that one consequence of his louche lifestyle was that State papers were 'returned marked with rings from cocktail glasses on them'. Bradford introduces this story with what seems to be the usual amount of evidence for it, 'there were stories'. Later, p.489 of the paperback, we learn that George VI showed secret State telegrams from our country's Ambassador to the Foreign Office, to the pro-German King of Greece who of course happened to be his relative. There is no criticism of this behaviour (which in turn raises the issue over whether you ever fully trust your Monarch if they have relations who are foreign heads of state?) - merely a mention that the Foreign Office though it 'bordering on the unconstitutional'.

BAE shambles

Oliver Kamm says that it has turned Britain into a banana republic.

Over at Tim Worstall's, there is a comment by David Gillies, who argues that without the arms sales to Saudi Arabia that are believed to be behind Tony Blair's intervention, Britain would not be able to build its new aircraft carriers. I can't work out what he means - the deal with the US over the JSF seems more important (though even there we could have bought French plane) - perhaps it's to do with BAE's revenue or something like that.

It's hard to find a good word for the decision, but Tony Blair's biggest fan, Mike (who I sometimes think might be a spoof), has a go in the Harry's Place comments.

An awful lot have tosh has been talked about this decision. As soon as heard about I thought it was great news; it has saved tens of thousands of working class jobs now and in the future, and it would have been a potentially devastating blow in Iraq and the future of the war on terror, all for prosecuting some long gone officials.
Can anyone here justify how they could possibly have been against the decision to drop this far too long running inquiry into a few bribes to Saudi officials, of all people?
Posted by Mike at December 15, 2006 03:18 PM

BAE

However, Lord Goldsmith consulted the prime minister, the defence secretary, foreign secretary, and the intelligence services, and they decided that "the wider public interest" "outweighed the need to maintain the rule of law".

Excellent news. This now means the sale of one of the world's most advanced fighter jets can go ahead to Saudia Arabia, our great regional ally.

Iraq

Timothy Garton Ash's excellent column on the disaster in the Middle East can be summed up in that stump speech of Al Gore's - all the things that should be going up have gone down and all the things that should be going down have gone up.

Who is Britain's most Stakhanovite blogger?

There's only one way to find out - a ladder*!

Today's contest - Oliver Kamm v Tim Worstall.

The post below noted Oliver Kamm's remarkable 10,740 words in just 7 days, or 1,534 words per day (wpd), but in fact that's a rather pedestrian total compared to Tim Worstall. Tim's managed 34,874 words in December, up to the 15th, or an astonishing 2,324 wpd.

So does Tim Worstall win this round of the Stakhanoviteness 'ladder'? The problem comes from the quotes. Anyone can copy and paste huge reams of text and have a large WPD. If we remove them from Tim's output, it falls to 21,192 words in December, or 1,412 wpd. So perhaps Oliver takes it after all? Well we must do the same with his output - which is not as easy as he doesn't put his quotes in italics - but a rough & ready measure gives us 9,186 words, or 1,312 wpd. So it's Worstall, by a clear 100 wpd.

So who will be Worstall's next challenger on the UK blogging Stakhanoviteness ladder? I've only managed about 3,500, so I am out of their league. Older readers will remember Stephen Dan Buste, who would regularly write posts over a million words long, but he's no longer blogging, or at least using words to do so. Anyone else?

* The UK blogging Stakhanoviteness ladder works in the same way as a squash ladder, in that the winner of the head-to-head then plays the person above them in the 'ladder' and if he wins that he moves up, if he loses he moves down.

Update: The Guardian has 8,229 words in its Saturday comment section (not CiF but the newspaper). Assuming Saturday is represenative, which is quite possibly is not, then we have a new measure. Tim Worstall represents 1/6th a national newspaper (and quite a wordy one), Unity almost a 1/3rd.

The Master Gambler

All the talk is of Monty, but Harmison got Ponting with a beauty, and the 3rd star - myself - is the talk of Betfair. I'm off to Monte Carlo to break the bank.

Sweepstake time

A Simply Red Stars album for the person who most accurately gets the number of words Oliver Kamm will put on his blog in December, the month in which he would he said it 'would not be updated'.

So far the total is 10,740 words by December 13th (and Oliver didn't start until Dec 6th). A linear extrapolation suggests he will reach 38,537 by December 31st, but a much better fit is the expoential curve as noted on the chart, which leads us to the conclusion that 17,643,259 words will be written by the end of the month. This is a remarkable 11 words a second on average, and 68 words a second on New Year's Eve!

So between 10,740 and 17,643,259 (unless Oliver ups his rate in the latter half of the month). Place yer bets!



Update: Dan is desperate to win the Simply Red Stars album, of which he is known to be fond, and has asked for clarification of the rules. Essentially the word count will be what Microsoft Word says it is for all the posts in December, excluding the original which said there would be no posts, but including the dates/headlines/name etc, ie all text. "I don't believe in many things", sang the Great Man, and I don't believe Oliver will change his behaviour to win the CD, but to ensure against blatant cheating he is not allowed to enter.

Update II: The closing date is Monday 18th.

Update III: "The Great Man" referred to in "Update" is me being sarcastic, and refers to Mick Hucknall, not Oliver Kamm. Oliver has much more progressive views on copyright protection and does not think of himself as a communist. In fact remembering how much Hucknall's Guardian article annoyed me, I'm changing the prize to an illegal copy of Simply Red's Stars, not the original (note, it's a notional prize, M'lord).

Cohen

The most 'underrated' book of 2006. Nick Cohen speaks:

Power and the Idealists, Paul Berman (Soft Skull Press).

There's a shocker. Why?

Barely reviewed, probably because it examined the awkward question of why the radicals of the 1968 generation have become so tolerant of movements of the extreme right.

Hair of the dog

One of a million articles in the national press on how to avoid a hangover, or at least reduce its impact.

I dispute this bit:

According to Prof Sir Colin Berry, professor emeritus of pathology at Queen Mary, University of London... "hair of the dog" merely postpones the agony.

It really doesn't. If you are very hungover, and have a few drinks, then go to sleep, you almost always wake up feeling much better than you did the previous morning. The principle is quite simple - you gradually drink less each day. The only risk is failing to do this. But the reason it is not a popular cure is it is obviously only practicable if you are a member of the international leisure class.

Plagiarism

I think the case against Ian McEwan is rather strong, as noted in this Slate article.

Father Jack...er the Bishop of Southwark, was not mugged

No, it appears it's a story of rather too much Christmas cheer at the Irish embassy.

Christmas Frenzy of War

You can always rely on Melanie Philips to trump everyone. Her hysterical reply to the Baker report on Iraq declares that the issue for G W Bush "who, until now, has operated through consensus" is now:

In the dying fall of his presidency, does he have the wherewithal to go for broke? On this lonely and frail figure the fate of the free world now depends.

I'm not sure about you but I get nervous when people start advising world leaders, particularly ones who are C-in-Cs of large armed forces to 'go for broke'. I think 'going for broke' is always a bad idea if being broke is a disaster, and as we are talking about the 'fate of the free world' here, I think it would be. Basically she wants him to declare war ('confronted and defeated') on Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

IDS and Blair's Breakdown Britain

I thought there were a lot of worrying statistics and facts in this IDS piece on current British society (via Chris Dillow) based on a report he is releasing today:

Our report shows that 750,000 more people have incomes below 40% of median income than a decade ago [MT update: Note, I calculate this to be (in 2004/05) £122 per week for a two adult household, £66 per week for a single adult, £180 per week for two adults living with two children, and £124 per week for a single adult living with two children - It'll be interesting to see the Report as you would have thought any access to government benefits would have raised income above these levels - maybe he means pre-benefits? Or students?]

Almost 11m people in Britain today suffer from relationship problems as a result of debt

Last month the prison population reached 80,000 for the first time. In 1993 the number incarcerated was just 45,000.

On the other hand I am less convinced by its view that it is all the current government's fault - most parents after all were born and went to school under Tory governments, and most of the worse trends have been getting worse for quite some time. Furthermore:

Even those who win promotion or salary increases can face marginal tax rates of up to 90%, leaving a large section of society with little incentive to better itself.

This is an oft-repeated statistic and usually you know it is going to lead to the right-wing quackery solution of a 'flat tax' (though IDS is nowhere near that simple, at least in this piece), but I really question how important it is. Chris Dillow again noted that there are two incentives going on - the first to get a job, and the second to get a better paid job. Labour have worried most about the first, and least about the second. This is not necessarily the wrong priority - how many people on below 40% of median income have jobs?

Finally IDS says:

A child from a family in poverty today is less likely to rise to the top of the income scale than a child in 1970.

I've heard this before, and it obviously is not outlandish if - as we know - inequality has risen and social mobility has fallen. But how do they know about children born today?

Nevertheless this report certainly sounds a more useful occupation for IDS than flying to Washington and agreeing with Republicans that Britain needs to increase its defence budget (and in any case that role is now over filled by excitable Blairites). He concludes:

The increasing gap between those in severe long-term poverty and the rest of us has depressing implications for the future health and cohesion of our society.

Update: Here's the report - which a quick glance suggests could be quite informative.

And here's the chart on the issue of poverty. IDS's claim is that the 60% of median income target has been abused, so there's now a larger proportion of people on 62% (say) than on 58%, which helps meet the targets set on poverty reduction. However this has been bought at the expense of more people on 40% (125,000 families with children, apparently). I wonder if the data is accurate enough to arrive at that conclusion, but its certainly thought-provoking. Here's the chart - click for larger version.

St Bernard Dog

The Sunday Telegraph has a review, a bit late, of 'King's Counsellor: Abdication and War - The Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles', aka "Tommy". The opening sentence is funny:

'Without vanity, I can say that my own impersonation of a St Bernard dog was the only histrionic feature of any real merit', writes Sir Alan Lascelles, Private Secretary to King George VI, of an evening of charades with the Royal Family at Balmoral in the late summer of 1942.

A new breed of super-efficient aircraft - nearly 100mpg!

This is a little unfair as The Times is hardly The Telegraph when it comes to statistical accuracy, and it's obvious what they mean here, but Tim's a very successful blogger and he does lots of this sort of stuff. Mmm, yes I am desperate. Click on the adverts - I have a tornadoed house to rebuild!

Aircraft use an average of four litres of fuel per 100km. But the next generation, including the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787, will use just under three litres per 100km.

Cook hits century

It's not quite as certain as Stephen Pollard's 'free money' but the possibility of England winning the 3rd test - it's looking good. If Stephen's commentator 'J' is reading this, don't go and put £100 on it, please.

Iraq

Do we stay or do we go? The Sunday Telegraph declares, and gets its two star columnists, Niall Ferguson and Matthew d'Ancona, to 'reach very differing conclusions on the recommendations on the Iraq Study Group'.

They're differing in what they think the recommendation is, but not in what purpose they think it serves, and really what they want to see, which is continued American presence. Niall Ferguson believes it is a bit of media manipulation designed to make the American public think they are withdrawing when in fact they are going to stay in Iraq, but do it better. He thinks this is good. Matthew d'Ancona thinks it is a bit of media manipulation to make theAmerican public think they have won, when in fact they have lost. He thinks this is bad.

Ancona repeats the criticism you hear from people like Christopher Hitchens, that James Baker is the last person anyone, particuarly if they think they are progressive, should listen to on Iraq (note The Dupe is consistent here - he didn't support the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein when James Baker was going around the world advocating it as secretary of state.). There seems to me three obvious replies to this. First, after spending the last four years telling us how wonderful G W Bush - G W Bush - is, the sudden distaste for very right-wing men from Houston might have come a bit late. Second, it's a measure of the scale and scope of the disaster in Iraq that people like Hitchens have helped shat us into that people like James Baker (and the dictators of Iran and Syria) might have to shovel us out of (this Michael Kinsley article is worth reading though) and finally, whilst I don't think much of the plan, it is a least a plan.

This last statement might sound desperate. Dan attacked those who declared 'the status quo is not an option' here (and here) on the effective grounds that the status quo cannot be worse than the status quo, whereas doing something often was, but in this case there really is no status quo other than the empty mantras of 'stay the course' and 'we will prevail' and so it has become far worse than doing nothing. Criticism of the 'realist' school of foreign policy clearly have a lot to go on, but they seem to compare it with a version of neoconservativism that exists only in their heads, and in which the bloody evidence of the last three years has been completely ignored.

There are probably hundreds of better ways to attempt to fix Iraq, but much as David Aaronovitch scorned those who were waiting for the 'Nelson Mandela Peace Corps' to invade the country, I'm afraid the Euston Manifesto Group isn't going to be allowed to suggest one. There are only two on the table - the one from the right-wing Texan with the initials JB or the one from the right-wing Texan with the initials GB - and the latter's hasn't worked.

Value destruction

Two rather unfortunate developments have just knocked value off the house I am buying.

1. It has just been hit by a tornado.

and worse, obviously;

2. The world's media are declaring that it is in Kensal Green, or worse than worse - Harlesden - whereas we are off the view it is Queen's Park.

Of course for a lot of people it has been far worse - one house looks totally destroyed. Remarkably no-one has died, though one man I believe has been taken to hospital.

London tube update

Diamond Geezer has the good, the bad and probably the ugly about the new plans for air conditioning, longer trains, fewer seats - sorry, greater capacity - and a higher frequency.

The Ashes, 3rd Test

England are 9-1 to win. I think that's generous of the bookmakers and have bet accordingly. Please note this is not a tip - my betting record is terrible.

Trident again

Matthew Parris says: "“Cock your ear to how tentative and apologetic the argument for a new generation of British nuclear missiles is becoming", while Oliver Kamm disagrees: "Not so. The tentativeness comes from opponents of a British nuclear deterrent."

I think Parris has the better of the argument. Oliver writes:

We cannot predict the threats to us in the middle of this century, just as 30 years ago we did not foresee Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands and Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait...Not in all cases, but in some, our independent deterrent may act as a political counterweight, causing a potential aggressor to think again.

Not in all cases, indeed, as it clearly didn't act as a deterrent in the two cases in the paragraph immediately above, and Iraq and Argentina are hardly major powers.

The argument basically is that although there is very little use for Trident at the moment, we cannot foresee military problem. But the examples given here are clearly not helpful, and not just because they didn't involve Polaris/Trident doing any deterring. Oliver argues that in December 1976 the invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentina was unforseeable. This cannot be true, as there was an 'invasion' of sorts in that month.

In December 1976, 50 Argentinean scientists landed on the island of South Thule, which is part of the Falklands dependency. In 1977 Prime Minister James Callaghan ordered two Royal Navy frigates to make speed for the South Atlantic along with a nuclear submarine. This proved sufficient to make the Argentineans withdraw their 'scientists'.

Even in 1952, thirty years before the Falkands conflict, I'm not sure it was unforseeable. One of the main reasons for keeping a large navy was the need to defend overseas posessions.

It might be more instructive to look at what Trident is useful for, not hope that it will be useful for something that turns up. I think that the argument in favour of Trident above other forms of nuclear deterrent essentially rests on Russia, and possibly China. It is a Cold War piece of military kit, useful only in that it can kill most of another (large) country's population and destroy its cities in retaliation for the same having happened to your own country (and hence it acts as a deterrent).

As such when the government talks of Trident meeting 'unforeseeable' risks it is really, if you believe the government has any motive for it other than ensuring electoral safety, a polite way of talking about the prospect of another Cold War with one of those two nations.

Place your bets

Stephen Pollard:

On that basis, I can claim to have been offered a senior position on the Conservative front bench. A Shadow Cabinet member once said to me that the party really needed people like me and I would make a good Education Secretary.

Which Tory-hating MP was this? I think it might have been Tim Collins.

Carol Gould on why Olympic engineer quit

She has the inside information:

This week the American head of the Olympic planning committee has left in disgust. He probably had to deal with a committee and workforce that waffled, took hours for alcohol-sodden lunches and had long discussions about where they would next take their ‘hols.’ Most of all the jaded London Committee probably put him down at every available opportunity and secretly hoped he would leave.

I bet you didn't know that!

Weird goings-on

Today, for what is the first time in the thousands of walks to the tube station I have made, a complete stranger said 'Good morning' to me as I we were passing in the street*. Furthermore he wasn't - or at least didn't appear to be - in any way mentally ill. Is there something going on?

* I was so shocked I completely failed to reply, thus probably ensuring he won't do it again.

Replacing Trident

On Comment Is Free a commenter suggested today that we only pretend to replace Trident, hence getting the deterrrent capability without spending the tens of billions of pounds. This is an interesting idea, but fails as to make the pretence believed we would have to spend the money on it anyway, unless we can get the US to take part in the subterfuge too, and pretend to give us them for free.

Incidentally I am on my way back from Edinburgh (which is a delightful place, although isn't the new Scottish Parliament building unattractive?) and the press there is full of comment on where the nuclear submarines will be based if Scotland goes its separate ways. It seems to me an obvious solution would be to ask the US if they could be based at King's Bay, which (I think) is where the US's near identical ships are.

Train pricing in the UK

Can anyone explain why two singles are sometimes, often, in fact usually cheaper than a return on British trains? I'd always assumed returns were a bit cheaper because the company got a guaranteed payment, and sometimes seat (if it was a fixed date and time return), and maybe also because it segmented the market into those who were unwilling to pay for flexibility and those who were.

Invade Scotland!

Aaro comes out with fighting talk on the prospects for Scottish independence. I see a glimpse of What the Papers Say in 2015:

Sir David "not the wildlife documentary maker" Aaronovitch, writing in The Times, argued that claims by the anti-war lobby that military action against Scotland was merely a ruse to gain control of the nation's oil was wide of the mark, and not just because it was running out. Instead it was merely the Decent humanitarian reason of freeing the Scottish people from the tyranny of President Galloway, and to find and destroy the secret nuclear weapons facility that Prime Minister Johnson (Not the former Minister and Trade Unionist) had alleged was at Faslane, on the Clyde. Aaronovitch warned that if the nuclear weapons facility was not there, "he would never believe another word I am told by the English government", and for that matter, "neither would anyone else", but only for five minutes, by which time he would have come up with good explanations for the honest error they had made.

New lows

I can't quite believe that the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer took 14 handwritten words from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and gave them to a handwriting 'expert' to come up with a character profile. What was the point? Are all the Shadow Cabinet going to submit to the same 'analysis'? The sooner David Cameron appoints 'Save the Pound' to the job the better.

Carbon[1] offsetting by lastminute.com

Much as the title says, basically. British Airways have been doing this, but not at the time you booked the flight (you were sent to a separate site). This is what Felix was asking for a few months ago, though personally I found the lastminute.com site not very good and never use it for flights.

I also have my doubts about the scability of carbon offsetting, which I said here.

[1] Whoops I forgot the footnote in the title. I know it should be "Carbon dioxide" offsetting, and "Carbon dioxide credits" or CO2 credits etc. But when I put this in a comment on Tim's site I thought it sounded silly, so I'm going to stick with carbon.

The Ashes

As with many children and even adults, Chris Brooke's cat was introduced to cricket during the Ashes of 2005, and thus probably sees The Ashes as being a close (and sometimes not even that) fought contest which England win, instead of the one-sided embarassment that us older folk know and love.

Hopefully such youthful innocence won't be dashed, though the early signs are not good (or perhaps that's how newer fans imagine it always starts, as England lure the Aussies into a false sense of superiority). On the other hand having it totally one-sided does help with the time zone - in 2002 I watched a lot of the Ashes and was in bed by 2am, as often England were mostly out by then. This year I am Sky +ing it, which means I record the seven hours it is on, and then watch it at 30 times normal speed. It takes just 14 mins, and Glenn McGrath seems almost pacey.

It's reasonably hard to regain the Ashes, as you need to win. England are currently 7 to 1 on Betfair if you fancy a punt.

My name is Bond, Snuggles Bond

After having read suspiciously early favourable reviews, and suspiciously unfavourable reviews after it had come out, I did not have high hopes for James Bond. But in fact it was rather good - albeit it half an hour too long. The only thing that spoilt it for me was very occasionally I thought Daniel Craig looked and sounded like Andrew Marr. This is obviously offputting. Worse, clearly, is that no-one else thinks this, therefore I might be seeing some odd pyschological effect of my Marr obsession.

On the issue of celebrities, the girlfriend had a dream on Monday that she was asked to show Sophia Loren and Kirk Douglas the inside of an English pub, as the had never seen one before. Apparently they were delighted.

Xmas

Has anyone seen the usual newspaper letters debate where someone writes in and says 'I hate how people use Xmas when it should be Christmas' and then someone else writes in and says something along the lines of (mercifully I forget the details) 'In fact the X has a long tradition as a sign of the Cross'? I fear, like Christmas itself, it arrives earlier and earlier and I've missed it, and there's nothing I like more than such things - the question of when the Millennium began, and more importantly, if anyone was really going to care that much, kept me occupied for months.

Satsumas

Aren't they great? I wonder how many one can eat in a day without negative health consquences. Are there government guidelines?

Two sets of comments

Apparently YACCs comments don't work with the new Blogger, and won't be fixed this week. So I've reluctantly installed the Blogger commnets, which you'll see to the side of the posts. I think the system is rather clunky, and at the moment plan to keep both in case YACCs returns to health. This promise is, however, much like the Times' promise to keep both the broadsheet and tabloid - ie it is a Tony Blair promise - I'm not exactly lying, but you'd be mad to believe me.

Six minutes later: You shouldn't now be able to see the YACCs comments. But they might return.

Good news from the Middle East

Apparently Iraq and Syria are going to have full diplomatic relations for the first time in decades. This slightly confused me as I thought they had been best buddies over that time, but it seems not.

Taxation out of the control

Fascinating chart in The Economist this week which shows PwC's attempts to calculate the entire tax burdern on a typical small firm. The UK seems to have the 5th lowest, whilst its compliance costs in hours is (I think) the 4th lowest

Hay on Wye

Norman Geras quotes former Sunday Times editor Harold Evans on a incident at the Hay-on-Wye festival earlier this year.

Something similar happened at this year's Hay-on-Wye festival, sponsored by the Guardian, where a five-person panel discussed "Are there are any limits to free speech?" One of the Muslim panelists said if anyone offended his religion, he would strike him. A lawyer, Anthony Julius, responded that Jews had lived as minorities under two powerful hegemonies, Christian and Muslim, and had been obliged to learn how to deal nonviolently with offense caused to them by the sacred scriptures of both. He started by referring to an anti-Semitic passage in the New Testament - which passed without comment. But when he began to list the passages in the Koran that denigrate Jews, describing them as monkeys and pigs, the panelists went ballistic. One of them, Madeline Bunting of the Guardian, put her hand over the microphone and said words to the effect "I am not going to sit here and listen to any criticisms of Muslims." She was cheered, and not one of the journalists in the audience from right or left uttered a word about free speech - not hate speech, mind you, but free speech of a moderate nature.

He adds himself:

I've excised the words [He did, I've put them back in - Matt] Evans attributes to Madeleine Bunting, since he doesn't claim to know precisely what she said, and neither do I. But Bunting wasn't simply a panellist, she was in the chair; and I have heard from others who were there that she intervened in broadly the way described - that is, in a not very balanced or even-handed chairperson-like manner. What a surprise

There's a few things that don't quite have the ring of truth in the Evans' version. It is said that Bunting put her hand over the microphone, presumably so the audience could not hear what she was saying, but then it is implied (it is possible he means the panel) that the same audience cheered those comments they couldn't hear, and then Evans expresses surprise that the journalists in the audience who couldn't hear those comments didn't make any comment in response to it.

The issue is not fully resolved by actually listening to the debate (or at least the most relevant bit), but it helps. You can find the mp3 linked to in the opening paragraph here and (at least according to ITunes' timer) the bit to listen to begins when Ziaudin Sardar says he would give someone a black eye if they caused him offence - which is at 25:06. Anthony Julius begins speaking at 30:13, he doesn't make the point Evans says he does (at least here; I don't doubt he believes it) but he does talk of the Old Testament being anti-semitic and of the Koran calling Jews 'apes' and 'monkeys' (at 31:47). Then he is interrupted loudly by Sardar saying that is 'absolutely absurd' and I think Phillip Henser, if he is American, who say that is not the case. Bunting then interrupts the argument to say that 'we're going to have to leave that there' and then she says, 'Anthony, I'm really sorry, I'm going to chair this'. Julius then says, I think as it is really faint, that 'I'm feeling censored', though (and here I cannot be sure if that is what is said or that this interpretation is correct) it might have been said at least slightly jokingly, as the audience laugh.

What can we conclude from listening to it? As one can hear no audience cheering in that section, it strongly suggests that there was not cheering, as it is alleged, in response to what Bunting said. So I think that bit is wrong. This gives credibility to the idea that Bunting didn't actually say anything like what is alleged, but of course as it's said to have been aired off-microphone we cannot be sure. The only thing that suggests it might have been is Julius's comment about being 'censored', though I think that is open to alternative explanations, such as Bunting's wish to move the debate on even before the argument blew up.

Melanie Phillips on Britain

Today she links approvingly to a piece that says Britain 'indirectly abetted the Holocaust' and that it is now 'outsourcing' the murder of Jews to Islamists. She also declares that Britain is 'morally bankrupt'.

The Things Daily Mail Readers Say!

On the current airline security measures...

...At Gatwick I saw enormous bins filled with hundreds of items of expensive private property. What happens to this booty? Does Cherie Blair get first pickings or the divine Pauline Prescott?

Janet Laughton, Uckfield, E.Sussex

Ok it ends in a ridiculous rant. But what does happen to the 'booty'?

To the ends of the Earth...and beyond

I'd missed this article by Tim Hames on the Iraq war in which he says that it does not matter how bad an idea any American foreign policy adventure would be, he would still insist on British troops joining in. You'll note he is not offering to join in himself, so these are other people's lives he is throwing away for no reason. The example he gives (which might seem in jest, but as it is making his main point, can't be) would mean certain death for the Parachute Regiment and not a single gain, except perhaps gratitude on the part of a about to be electorally-destroyed government.

I am a neo-American. I think that when US foreign policy is wise Britain should back it to the hilt and when it looks wayward we should be in the thick of it so that we can be a potential influence. So if the Americans opted to liberate Pluto tomorrow I would think to myself (i) that is a little odd, (ii) is it worth the effort when the place is not formally a planet anymore? and (iii) how can we ensure that there are seats in their spaceships for the Parachute Regiment?

The things London Lite Readers Say!

It has to be said the Daily Mail's letters page is not a patch on London Lite's for inanity.

In the latter today we have a special letters feature on 'Did Tony Blair sell peerages for loans?'. "Jane", from London, is an optimist:

It would be impossible to cover something like this up! The police have questioned lots of people on this and nobody, as far as I have heard, is going to jail. If it were really true that peerages were "sold" then lots of people would be arrested. It's just not true. Everyone is making this as easy as possible for the plice by co-operating with their investigations. This is because it's so important that justice is seen to be done and the whole mess cleared up as quickly as possible.

"William" from Wendover is not:

The Labour Party should be banned from running for office ever again! Maybe that would help all parties to focus on getting rid of sleaze from within.

s

Problem solved

Alan Johnson says that he backs Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership when Tony Blair stands down or is forced to go. This solves a problem we've been worrying about for some time, that is whether Alan 'not the minister' Johnson would have to be renamed Alan 'not the prime minister' Johnson. NTM it remains, unless Gordon is very selfish and sacks him from the government.

The Things Daily Mail Readers Say!

Further to the young woman who hopes to pay off her credit card bill by selling her eggs (Mail), I don't want her eggs but I wouldn't mind some of her bacon.

James Kyley, Betchworth, Surrey

The absurdity of the Left

I've managed to get a sneak preview of Nick Cohen's latest masterpiece, "What's left? How Liberals lost their way".

Here's an excerpt where he tears into a particularly idiotic left-winger:

I was brought up to believe that being left-wing was to be good. Now I'm not so sure. Some people who claim on the Left appear to believe the strangest things. A good example is an award-winning journalist who wrote in the late 1990s and early 2000s for a number of impeccably liberal publications. He supported CND, who wanted to get rid of our nuclear weapons despite the overwhelming nuclear strength of a hostile Soviet Union. In February 2000, in the New Statesman (not much of a surprise, you might say) he declared that the best definition of 'terrorist' was also the best definition of the British "political class and security establishment". On June 17th 2001 he declared that "Bush is destroying international agreements and pushing potential rivals who fear American military dominance of the planet through the militarisation of space into a new and unnecessary nuclear race".

Was his complacency shook by the horrific events of September 11th 2001? Not a bit. In those dark days after the atrocity, he argued that British intervention in Afghanistan - where the perpretators of that wicked act were based - 'endangered' its citizens, and declared that its Prime Minister's 'indiscriminate love' for the United States and meant Britain was 'American's poodle'. Worse still, he criticised those liberals in the media who were prepared to stand against Afghanistan as 'demented' and declared that standing shoulder to shoulder with our American allies had 'pinned a large target sign on this country'.

As America continued to recover from the horrors of September 11th, on January 14th 2002 he wrote a piece in the New Stateman titled, 'Why it is right to be anti-American', declaring that "The determination to destroy the Kyoto agreement, International Criminal Court and Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty says in effect: "We are not content with our dominance. We want more." American unilateralism is contemptuous of the rest of the world, and the rest of the world can't be blamed for responding in kind." He concluded, "there is little about modern America to be for." In March 2002 he declared there were no links between Iraq and Islamic terrorism: "The CIA and MI6 have searched for them for six months and found nothing."

In August of that year he criticised the great lawyer Alan Dershowitz as a "blood-lusting fantasist" for advocating torture, and arguing that such a policy could not "be excused as an understandable but transient overreaction to the slaughter of innocents. The suspension of civilised standards has become settled policy".

Pinkos

The Army Times is going to call for Rumsfeld to go.

Perle, Adelman and Frum jump ship

Perhaps not quite as surprising as Con Coughlin, but notable nevertheless. Who's next? Are the nutters at the National Review still in favour of the war?

Not England

Iain Dale calls for an English Parliament, and in this bit of text says how much he loves England. He says:

John Major was right to talk about warm beer and old maids cycling down country lanes.

Oh lord, here we go again. The Major speech referred to was made in 1993, in a desperate attempt to reassure the euro-sceptics. He said:

50 years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on country grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pool fillers and - as George Orwell said - 'old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'.

It was based on this piece from George Orwell.

The old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning – all these are not only fragments, but characteristic fragments, of the English scene.

As a characteristic fragment of the English scene this was pretty idiotic in 1943, let alone 1993, and will probably be barely understood in 2043. When you return from a foreign trip, say to Heathrow, you don't look out of the window and think 'Look, there's an old maid dodging the juggernauts as she cycles to Holy Communion on the M4 - we must be back in England', or similarly at Dover, 'Look, there's an old maid cycling to Holy Communion - we must be back in England' and if by some freak you did, you'd soon be administering the last rites as the tail-to-tail juggernauts or the really steep Dover hill got the poor old dear.

Of course as a prediction of what makes England England forever, it's not as loopy as Stanley Baldwin's:

"the sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, … the sound of a scythe against a whetstone, and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill, the sight that has been seen in England since England was a land, and may be seen in England long after the Empire has perished and every works in England has ceased to function

The only possible sense in which this was true would be if you say the Empire perished in 1947, and even then I doubt it was a particularly common sight then either. But at least Conservative Politicians use this an example of what England is not, rather than what it is.

Anyway at least it gives us a new game to pass the time on long car journeys. Forget Pub Cricket - we now have Baldwin V Major (or Orwell, if you prefer Orwell's Decency to Major's moral quietism). One half of the passengers have to look out for Old Maids cycling to Holy Communion in the morning Autumn mist, and the other half have to keep their ears pricked for the sound of a scythe against a whetstone, and their eyes open for the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill. First to one wins.

Asbestos seen as a 'badge of honour'

What weird things the Kids are up to nowadays, I thought, as I read the above headline in this morning's Guardian. What were they doing with it? Making it into dust and inhaling it? Apparently not - it seems I misread it.

Iraq War

Daniel Finkelstein claims supporting the Iraq war was like trying to predict the score of last week's Chelsea v Sheffield United- a sensible person would support the war and predict a Chelsea victory:

Now, seven out of ten times this would have been correct and you would have won the fiver. A couple of games might have ended in a draw. But once every so often, Sheffield United will pull off a victory. The pundits will pore over the game trying to work out how it happened, but no one will be completely certain. And you? You might feel mildly foolish.

Yet did Sheffield United’s victory mean that your bet was the wrong one? Of course not. To have predicted a Sheffield victory would have been silly, since most of the time it would have been wrong.

This is a rather strange analogy, given in last week's game Chelsea beat Sheffield United, 2 - 0, yet the Iraq was has not been a success. But nevertheless it's an important piece as it means he admits the war itself has been a disaster (as a prediction of a Chelsea victory would have been in this imaginary world in which they lost to Sheffield United).

Finkelstein didn't used to be so dismissive of outcomes and how they affected the rightness or wrongness of decisions. Back in the glory days of May 2003, when he assumed he'd backed a winner (and all this betting talk does make you wonder whether he sees it in that light) Finkelstein told us that:

'The war's feeble opponents clutch at a last straw: Was it a quagmire? No. Did the Arab street rise? No. Did it plunge the Middle East into a crisis? No. Did the Iraqi people fight the occupiers to the death? No. Did they prefer Saddam Hussein to the Americans? No. Every single thing that the anti-war protesters predicted would happen if we invaded Iraq did not happen. They were utterly wrong. Yet they still cling to one small sliver of hope. We have not yet found Saddam's weapons of mass destruction".

Well it's lucky those feeble opponents got the quagmire, occupier fighting to the death and middle east crisis wrong, isn't it?

Government waste

Does anyone really believe that Britain's two new aircraft carriers - the rumour that one is to be named HMS Henry 'Scoop' Jackson is untrue, by the way - will cost only £3.6bn?

Christmas

I wouldn't like to be a parent of small children if news comes through that the Emma Maersk has sunk.

Summer Time

It's over for another season. The debate this year about making it permanent, and having double Summer Time, seemed less prominent than normal - I suppose no-ones got anything left to say.

One thing to note from next year is apparently the American states who do this are introducing it a month earlier and stopping it a week later (again via JW). I don't think the Europeans are doing this (I could be totally wrong though) in which case for those five weeks the time difference will be one hour less (this used to be the case for a week or so but I think the dates were standardised not that long ago).

Hungry?

The Triple-Bypass burger served at the Heart Attack Grill, with 'nurses' to wheelchair you out of there when you're finished. Apparently they're being sued about the nurses. Via John Walkenbach.

John Humphrys is suicidal

He's ranting in the FT about marketing and advertising hype, such as saying 'exciting news' when it's about Nectar points, or 'great deals' when BT is in fact raising prices. He notes the offer might have a deal, but it is so hard to find, 'soon one loses the will to live'.

It's one thing the rats leaving the sinking ship...but Con Coughlin?

Yes, probably the most pro-Iraq war figure in British journalism has jumped ship, and blames the dynamic duo in the process, but in particular (Matthew Parris is looking more and more right) the Americans, and the Defense Department (though I find it hard to believe Blair would have done better).

Con Coughlin's own role in cheerleading this fiasco shouldn't be forgotten,and presumably some of his criticism needs to be seen in the light of political positioning. Nevertheless as he points out Blair has to take a lot of the blame - committing British troops in an overseas adventure he believed hadn't been thought through.

More alcohol

Well it's Friday night.

The suggestion by the health minister, which has been endorsed by the Police, that alcohol taxes need to rise to curb binge drinking is, I think, doomed to failure. It's not that I don't think price matters - the falling real price of alchol must be a factor in the increased consumption, unless it is unlike most other goods. It's more the amount you might have to increase it by to curb consumption is probably beyond what's politically feasible. That's why it's different from cigarettes, where taxes are set to curb all consumption by all people.

The Lib Dems suggest (the BBC's reporting not a direct quote) "raising tax on damaging high-alcohol drinks, such as super-strength lagers, while lowering the duty on less harmful drinks". But there's a four letter word which starts with 'W' and ends in 'E' which I think young people have realised offers quite a good bang for your buck. In many pubs now you can get 14% ABV red wine for £5/£6 a bottle (older readers - you really can, I've seen it - in fact I've bought it, it's Jacobs Creek so not even terrible), which is 57p per unit (at £6). This is cheaper than alcopops, and it's more potent. £10 gets you 17.5 units of alcohol, which is probably enough for almost anyone.

The duty apparently on this is £1.29, so even if you doubled it to £2.58 you wouldn't make a huge difference in the selling price - £6.29 or £7.29. I suppose you could tax at £5 a bottle, but then you might start annoying your restaurant trade.

Girls' drinks

There's a risk in posting about how consumer tastes are changing that you are describing how you are changing, not the wider world. We noticed this a few weeks back at a dinner party, where the general agreement that Marks & Spencer had a much more fashionable and youthful women's clothes section than a few years ago was followed by a general silence when we realised it might be that we were much older.

It's risky, but nevertheless I am bravely going to claim that the era of higher and higher alcohol content in drinks might be drawing to a close. I haven't, I should admit, noticed this in wine, where the French are following the New World higher and higher. But in beer I think there is a trend, led by Becks Vier, and what I noticed tonight, Carling C2. As is slightly hinted at by their names, the former is 4% ABV and the latter 2% ABV. For readers who are still in the 1970s thinking that the Becks is pretty high, the standard Becks (and most lagers) is 5%, and the standard Carling is 4.1%.

I did buy the C2, though I haven't tried it yet. I don't have high hopes as the standard Carling is terrible, but then again perhaps it can't be much worse. Then again I quite like Becks 0% alcohol (particularly if you are driving or pregnant, as me and a friend were respectively last week when we agreed it was quite nice).

Blaming the Left

I feel its time to blame Left. Generally, of course, for the debacle in Iraq, which is mostly their fault. But specifically for the return of Jimmy Saville to our TV screens. The Left, whose fault is surely is, have a lot to answer for.

Urgent Spam from David Horowitz

Yes the crazy fool has emailed again:

The Hollywood Left is making an all-out effort to tilt the elections and undermine the War on Terror, but you have a chance to make a difference by reading to the end of this letter and joining our cause...George Soros and the Sundance Film Festival are currently giving away millions of dollars to fund over a hundred anti-American, anti-Israeli films like "My Terrorist" and "The Women of Hezbollah." Meanwhile Robert Redford's Sundance Channel airs such fare as "Torture: The Guantanamo Guidebook," a 'reality TV' show in which American soldiers are depicted torturing 'innocent' Guantanamo detainees. On October 27th, just one week before the election, a movie will be released in U.S. theatres titled "Death of a President" that depicts the assassination of George W. Bush in graphic detail. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and George Clooney's "Syriana" (which sympathetically depicts a suicide bomber who blows up an American oil facility) are currently being used as recruiting tools by terrorists. Hezbollah helps to distribute Moore's film in the Middle East.

Other recently released or forthcoming films from the left include:
"The Road to Guantanamo" - a docudrama' about three Muslim men captured on an Al Qaeda battlefield in Afghanistan who say they were innocent and were tortured by U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo; the film recreates alleged scenes of torture by U.S. troops. "The Situation" in which American soldiers murder an Iraqi boy and trigger a cycle of violence. "Stop Loss" starring Ryan Philippe - about a soldier who refuses to serve in Iraq. "Charlie Wilson's War," starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, written by the "The West Wing's" Aaron Sorkin, which alleges that the CIA helped create' the Taliban and Al Qaeda by funding the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s - an allegation that has been repeatedly proven false. If you're as disturbed by this as we are, you have a chance to make a difference. For the first time since Ronald Reagan left Hollywood for Washington there is a voice in Hollywood to counter the political left. The Liberty Film Festival is Hollywood's first pro-American, pro-Israel, film festival and cultural organization. Its purpose is to create the kind of film product of which Americans who love freedom and love their country can be proud. In June 2006, the Liberty Film Festival joined the David Horowitz Freedom Center to create a force in the entertainment industry which will stand up for the values that prevailed when Hollywood was Ronald Reagan's town....

The 2006 Liberty Film Festival, is scheduled for November 10-12, 2006 in Hollywood, will be screening 28 outstanding new conservative films. These include

"A Journey to Iraq" -- which shows the gratitude Iraqi civilians feel towards President Bush and the American people for their help.
"Suicide Killers" -- how Islamic societies - not George Bush - create terrorists.
"Border War" -- about the threat of illegal immigration
"ACLU: At War With America" -- how the ACLU undermines religious freedom- plus dozens of other terrific new films by up-and-coming conservative filmmakers.

It is critical that Americans like you support the Liberty Film Festival and the brave conservative filmmakers countering the anti-American propaganda of the Hollywood Left! We can't afford to let Hollywood undermine the War on Terror and turn it into another Vietnam.

The left understands the stakes. On opening night of the 2005 Liberty Film Festival, left-wing protestors rushed the stage of the Pacific Design Center and tried to attack me as I introduced the film "Brainwashing 101" which is about the left's efforts to indoctrinate students on American college campuses. The protestors screamed "Fascists have no right to free speech!" "You have no right to free speech!" They had to be tackled by members of the audience to prevent them from doing me bodily harm. Their message couldn't have been clearer: in Hollywood, conservatives have no right to free speech.

It goes on (and I'm shortening it for you)

While the Hollywood Left attacks the cause of freedom, undermines the security of our country, and places our troops in danger, filmmakers who support America and the War on Terror are under siege. Just look at the Left's shameful attempt to censor the outstanding ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11." Democrat Senators and Congressmen wrote to ABC and demanded the miniseries be pulled, simply because it depicted Bill Clinton's failure to capture Bin Laden! And in an unprecedented move, the entire Democrat leadership of the Senate, led by Harry Reid, threatened to pull ABC's broadcast license if the network didn't cancel the miniseries. The Liberty Film Festival led the way in promoting "The Path to 9/11" and rallying conservative support for this outstanding miniseries. Liberty Film Festival Co-Founder Govindini Murty wrote the first review of "The Path to 9/11," and helped initiate a nation-wide conservative media effort to defend the miniseries and prevent it from being pulled off the air. For her efforts she was attacked in the pages of The Nation and the Huffington Post by Max Blumenthal (son of Clinton lawyer Sidney Blumenthal) who labelled her, Liberty Film Festival Co-Founder Jason Apuzzo, and everyone who supported "The Path to 9/11" as "political terrorists." This is just one example of how the Liberty Film Festival defends the free speech rights of conservative filmmakers and helps ensure that their work is seen by the public - despite the attempted censorship of the Left.

The case for the war in Iraq

Oliver Kamm makes the case for the war in Iraq, and bemoans the fact that the government (presumably Tony Blair excepted) doesn't seem very keen on doing so.

It's definitely worth reading and can be found here. The argument essentially is the risk of Saddam acquiring nuclear weapons was such (and the consquences so dire) that even the current price of the war was worth paying. It's broadly the same argument as he has been making for about four years now, which I say not to denigrate it but to applaud the consistency, but the tone is somewhat less confident than this defence made nearly three years ago (and I think Kenneth Pollack, who Oliver quoted then as wavering, has changed his mind), and the humanitarian angle, for obvious reasons, features less heavily than in some of Oliver's pieces.

I don't agree with it, for the reasons I've never agreed with it so I won't bore you here. But one indirect point I would make is that Oliver criticises the Bush Administration for not handling the invasion, particularly the post-war planning, with seriouness, ie he thinks they did it frivolously. This is such a devastating charge to be laid at any government (think of how that must make feel the relatives of the troops who have died, at the very least) that I find it remarkable that he can believe it and still be a supporter of that Administration and its leading figures. Additionally, was Tony Blair aware of this attitude of the Administration - if not why not? - and should Britain really be fighting wars with partners that it thinks aren't taking it seriously?

John Reid's new immigration proposals

It's hard to disagree with Phillipe Legrain's view of John Reid's latest popularity gimmick, so you might as well read him not me. The only good thing about it is what Phillipe says, it will probably blow back in his face. But this bit rather surprised me:

Contrary to the scare stories, this open door has proved to be a revolving door. Over 600,000 East Europeans may have come work in Britain since May 2004, but most have already gone home again: ONS figures show that in 2004 only 48,000 stayed longer than 12 months, with net migration reaching 74,000 in 2005. That is a paltry 0.12% of the British population.

I thought there were 600,000 East Europeans who had come here and stayed. That was certainly the impression given in news reports and by politicians. Was I completely wrong?

A slight change of emphasis

Failure is not an option.

US Ambassador to Iraq, November 2005

Success in Iraq is possible and can be achieved on a realistic timetable.

The same US Ambassador to Iraq, October 2006

Islamophobia

Oliver Kamm says:

[Islamophobia] is a fabricated and question-begging linguistic manoeuvre designed to present the protection of religious sensibilities as a civil liberty issue.

i.e. Islam is not a race, and therefore "phobia" to it is a respectable position. Which makes sense.

And yet, and yet. There seems to me a difference between criticising religious belief, which is in everyone's interest, and becoming obsessed with one religion to the point where your criticisms become both absurd, e.g. pretending its adherents control organisations they plainly don't, and personal - ie obsessing about the number of adherents it has, and where they live.

This tendency is most obviously represented in the mainstream media by this piece from Melanie Phillips. And there (and in similar cases) I think "Islamophobic" serves a purpose - like all new words it takes time to settle on a definition, but it's edging towards something like "obsessive, extreme, irrational and fantastical criticism of Islam and Muslims".

So the committee awarding the prize is guilty of adopting a too wide definition, in my view (and Harry's Place is only guilty in the sense that they are phobic of all religions, for instance see Harry's proposal that children should be banned from religious services until they are 18). But the word adds value.

Racial murders

Marcus at Harry's Place complains about the press coverage of racial murders of whites, based on new figures the Observer has obtained from the Home Office:

Between 1995 and 2004 there have been 58 murders where the police consider a racial element played a key part. Out of these, 24 have been where the murder victim was white.

It's certainly not how the media have reflected things recently. Compare and contrast the attention given to the murders of Stephen Lawrence in London and Kris Donald in Glasgow if you need proof.

A Police Officer says its hard to get the media as interested in the murders of young, white, men, and the Observer journalist says this is because there are fears of stoking up support for the BNP. Marcus adds [of the BNP]:

Their traditional claims that working class Britons are being treated as if they didn't count is actually given evidential support by this sort of attitude.

There's two things I think worth saying here. Marcus's assumption that White Britons means simply 'the traditional working class' is too simplistic. The article says:

Of the 24 white victims also included those who were Jewish, 'dark-skinned' Europeans or gypsies. In addition, seven of those were killed by white attackers.

Second, as I note in the comments, I'm not sure the Police Officer is correct, and I the comparison of Stephen Lawrence (murded 13 years ago) with Kriss Donald (murdered two years ago), is misleading. In the case of Stephen Lawrence, a) the killers weren't caught, and b) it seems likely that police racism was a contributory factor (and c) it was in London). Initially, before all of that, the Stephen Lawrence case did not receive a lot of coverage. Take the Times (all data from searching NewsUK). For Stephen Lawrence, there was one mention on April 24th, and then the next wasn't until May 3rd (10 days afterwards) and then because the local MPs had complained about the lack of police and societal outrage (it was the 3rd racial murder in a few weeks, or at least that was said at the time). The Times had 8 stories on Kriss Donald's horrific murder in ten days after it happened. Now, some allowance must be made for the Times having more stories on everything now than then, and the later figures including the Sunday Times whereas the former don't. However I think it is hard to claim there was more coverage of Stephen Lawrence's murder than Kriss Donald's.

I think a better argument might be that all murders receive too little press attention, but I suspect a tone of negativity would put off readers (I remember a comment about the Daily Mail editor saying this one).

Iraq and Vietnam

In an interesting article Andrew Sullivan argues that Iraq is worse than Vietnam, because the consequences of defeat are higher.

In other respects the analogy is flawed because the situation in Iraq is worse than Vietnam. When South Vietnam fell, the consequences were largely restricted to the region. They were awful — as the toll of communism culled hundreds of thousands in Cambodia and Vietnam. But they ended at the ocean.

In Iraq the consequences of American withdrawal could be a full-scale civil war, widespread ethnic cleansing, and the involvement of Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and even Egypt in a potentially catastrophic Sunni-Shi’ite conflagration. Add to that the possibility of Turkey intervening in Kurdistan and you could have the region with a chokehold on the world’s energy supplies turning into a corpse-ridden, Balkan desert.

It's possible this is what will happen, but it's worth remembering that although (at least geopolitically) the consequences of defeat in Vietnam 'ended at the ocean', that wasn't how it was perceived beforehand - the whole point of 'domino theory' was based on the fear of defeat spreading.

Compensation Culture - we need more of it

This piece in the Telegraph is pretty useless. Simon Carr at first acknowledges that 'compensation culture' probably isn't the problem he wishes to make out, but then argues it anyway. I had something to say about this back in 2004, and I think it stands the test of time well. When you look at the numbers the majority of the compensation claims, which in total are equal to about 0.6% of GDP per year (and that of course isn't the 'cost' of them to the country, as it is mostly a transfer payment), are for injuries sustained in motor vehicle accidents.

More strangely Carr decides to illustrate his point about "compensation culture" gone mad with the Aberfan tragedy, and the fact the parents didn't sue the National Coal Board. Yet of course they should have. Carr himself notes that the Coal Board demanded most of the money made available to move the slag heaps, Wikipedia suggests that they subtracted the public appeal money off their compensation (£500 per child). So an uncaring and unresponsive public authority (the official report found the NCB were guilty of "ignorance, ineptitude and a failure of communication), whose negligence led to the deaths of 144 people, 116 of whom were children - is there a better example of why a "compensation culture" is necessary?

It's getting nasty

I suppose it was always likely to come to this. The comically titled 'Liberty Dad' knows who to blame:

Nobody knows how to force folk to become freedom loving.
The successful Kurds show what Bush's Liberation could have been like -- IF the Arab Iraqis wanted it enough. The failure is not Bush, or else the Kurds, too, would be a mess.

The failure in Iraq is the failure of the Arab Iraqis, the failure of Sunnis to live in peace with Shia. Bush gave them a chance for peace and development, but too many of them chose terror. And now they're getting it.

And it's THEIR fault.

They chose the wrong bloody country! What was it the man said in that round-table, "Iraq poisons the debate". If only they'd have chosen a country that was grateful.

Melanie Phillips reaches new lows?

I know she has her defenders, but I think they would be hard pushed to say something good about this piece.

She says:

Thus the triumphalism of someone who understands better than the dhimmi dummies of Oxford university the magnitude of the cultural pass they have so recklessly sold

The dhimmi dummies of Oxford University. And the cultural pass they have so recklessly sold. What does she mean by that?

The piece mixes up both Muslims at the University and in the city as whole (the 8,000 by the way refers to the city and isn't that far out of line for England as a whole, it's 5% to 7% of Oxford's population). Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I assume she does not believe Muslims should be banned from living in Oxford, or that the University has much say in whether they do or not.

Instead she must be complaining about the university allowing the formation of the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies. This is strange given I'm pretty sure in the past one of her complaints about Islam has been the lack of study and interpretation. And I think she means more than this, as the linked piece also talks of the University's many Muslim scholars and Muslim students. I'm not therefore confident even on this interpretation that she is isn't suggesting there should be fewer of them.

But does anyone else know?