New, Non-Politically Partisan or Sweary Blog Started

Yes, I've decided to start a new blog, with Ms Drummer, in which I write for the first time *under my real name*.

But in the spirit of the new Coalition era, I'll not be whinging about the govt (though I could do plenty of that if I chose). It'll be what I wanted TTD to be, before I got obsessed by NuLab.

I note that several bloggers have given up since the erection: LFAT, Mr Eugenides, to name but, er, two. Mr E is the real loss, for although LFAT was reasoned and liberal, Mr E was the genuine voice of anguished anti-NuLab sentiment.

Centre right blogging was born in the UK out of a sort of proto-Tea Party movement. It was born and flourished on the basis that NuLab were in charge of the country and the world's biggest media organisation (ie the BBC) and that they were virtually unchallenged, given that the Tories were so crap. This was something like 04/05. Blogging really took off during 06, when the Tories got their act together. Then the Left got really sorted, with outstanding blogs like Liberal Conspiracy doing what the left do best: agglomerating voices against an enemy. Then we were back where we started: voices in the dark, shouting at each other.

You need a certain nerve to be a political blogger, one I never had, despite being referenced once by the Staggers as a Tory blogger...I never wanted what I became as a blogger, though I asked for it right enough.

Where do I stand today, as if matters? Well, I was happy enough to see the end of NuLab, but I don't really know what to make of the new govt. Part of me sort of hopes to see elements of the Tories and Lib Dems merge.

The new party could be called something like...oh I don't know..The Liberal Party, maybe?

Anyway. The new blog is being set up and written with Ms Drummer, who is some way to the left of me. That's probably part of it all.

It's here: http://severnside.wordpress.com


I may keep open TTD for random witterings when I'm in from the pub or whatever I want to write. But I'll also refer readers here to new posts at Severnside.

That's Not All of It, By The Way

That's only some of the stuff I wrote about 1984. I'll post a few more all in due course. Meanwhile there's a government collapsing somewhere...

The Value of My Blogging

$329 apparently.

Hardly seems worth it.

Matt's Blogging Issues

Well it seems that not for the first time Matt M has given up blogging. I've said repeatedly how much I rate his attitude and talent, so I won't dwell on that. But it made me wonder how I have stuck it out, with considerably less to say than Matt, for nearly three years. Here are a couple of ways I've managed it.

1)I couldn't give a rat's arse about it. I think this is important. I blog when I want to, don't when I don't. I don't care about stats, though it is lovely to have comments. Actually check that. I care about the comments, less so about the actual posting.

2) I say what I like. Actually this isn't true. One way I can stick it more easily than before is by staying out of the violent disputes which rage across the blogosphere. You wouldn't believe how much hate there is there: not just for politicians and those in power, but among those who just plain disagree. Real hate. So I tend to write nowadays about other stuff, though I allow myself a rant or two occasionally.

3) I blog when drunk. This is great fun. I feel sorry for anyone who has to read it, of course, but I like it.

4)I leave it fallow for weeks at a time. This hopefully gives me more ideas when I come to write later on. It also means I can't build a proper following but I don't mind too much.

I guess this isn't much use to Matt. But I hope whatever he does he gets back into blogging or serious writing soonish, because the shrillest voices are beginning to clog up the place now....

Crushed

...receives a very unTTD post...

Remembrance Sunday

I haven't posted anything of my own, despite always marking this day with a poppy and thoughts and prayers, but instead today i thought I would just round up a few blogosphere Remembrance posts. James Higham gives a lot of the background. Behind Blue Eyes has an excellent post about the day and what it signifies about values. Leg-Iron has closed his blog as a mark of respect. DK quotes Cecil Spring-Rice, though he needn't seem as diffident about it as he does. And Heather Yaxley adds a personal recollection to the day.

That was all. I liked these posts, and I like the different shades of remembrance they bring.

I wonder if Hazel Blears will see it the same way?

More Stat Pron

By the way, according to Sitemeter, my readership continues to increase, from "hardly anyone at all" to "very very few people." I got 2,200 visits in October, which is a record, and I imagine that 95% of them are those helpful little robot things. If anything, the percentage of hits coming through CBI has increased, up to around 99%. If it wasn't for him, I'd be down to 4 or 5 a day, like in the pre-blogpower days. I don't mind things being quiet, actually, because it means i don't get involved in all those bloody awful circular arguments you get on blogs. It also means I can say what I like with little fear of being refuted. This is a blessing, because there is nothing worse than those miserable bastards who just do not agree with one. You know the sort - different ideas, different background, different worldview. They're not too bad if they change their minds quickly, but if they don't they become a real pain. So yes, avoiding this is good.

Actually believe it or not I am just like this in real life too. I so loathe and detest confrontation now that I sit on my own all the time reading the paper. At the slightest sign of an argument my pulse races and I lose the faculty for independent, rational, sequential, logical thought. I just start to shake.

I can't really explain this: it's not as if I'm not exposed to other viewpoints all the time. It's more that I just can't stand them: and that my own worldview is so shaky that I feel I am being knocked down when it is challenged. But instead of punching someone's lights out, as my generation has tended to do, I just get all weepy and sad.

Erm...

Of course it does mean that life round here is pretty dull, but then you need an chill out room in the middle of this wild party we call the blogosphere, don't you?

Yes, Alright

I'm avoiding work. I suppose it's easy to tell with me. As I am less inclined to work, so my rate of blogging goes up. In fact my archives are a neat guide to my liking for work.

I see DK is testing out the idea of a best of DK book. Good luck to him, though I'll probably just surf his archives rather than buy the book. I've been toying with a "Least Crap of TTD" book for a while now but the problem is I just can't be bothered.

Government's Power Grab (part n)

They're at it again: preparing the ground, building a consensus among themselves, establishing their opponents as simply illegitimate and continuing the process of trying to bring the blogosphere under control.

The modern totalitarians are very effective indeed. They know how to work things.

Firstly you need, definably, to be on the side that is understood by those who matter (government, academia, liberal media) to be the compassionate one. It helps if you can point to a list of laws you've introduced on behalf of special interest groups. It also helps if you can have "science" on your side - especially social studies carried out by people with definite ideologies.

Then you pathologise your opponents, slowly but clearly. You begin with accusing them of being "x-phobic", and when this is mainstreamed, you start on the idea of "offensiveness" and "ignorance" (which merely means "dissent" when used in this context). You discuss the need for "dialogue" (which means the government talking and everyone else listening), and you look sternly upon those who are "unhelpful". Laws are brought in citing some of these words. During this process minor court cases, arrests, fines and stories in the tabloids steadily demonstrate that these words actually do have criminal impact and are enough to have the police interested in you. So, gently, you spread a little fear while denouncing all these stories as myths.

Your opponents being successfully pathologised, it follows that they will need to be controlled in order to promote healthy dialogue and positive contributions. There will be an urgent need to prevent the abuse of science and the spread of ignorance.

You will begin very softly, with a quality mark for the good blogs. You will, however, be building a national firewall and a national electronic database during this time. You will send in your trolls to the political blogs. You will maintain the discussions in Europe about the dangers of untrammelled offensiveness online. Eventually you will discover an incidence or two of racism or some other offensiveness on a blog or two, and this will serve as a pretext for closing down websites.

Finally, because of the huge public outcry in the Guardian and on the BBC following these incidents, laws will be introduced and a Council or a Commission will be created, to which all blog-writers will need to apply. This council will consist of government supporters and one or two pro-government bloggers. Applications for rightish blogs will mysteriously fail to be successful.

This will continue regardless of whether this government stays in power or not: for the other Party will be too afraid to close the Commission down, for fear of being painted as pro-racist or pro-whateverotheroffensivenessmattersatthattime.

500th TTD post

Crikey. I don't seem to have said all that much over the years!

And I know one post is still in draft, but that's because i can't get my computer to upload a scary bit of Arthur C Clarke's World of Mysterious Powers!

Sanity on Leave

You might be thinking: well where is TD? The world is collapsing into fiscal chaos, into political impotence, and into the virulence of ideology, and one of our most vile spewers of undiluted verbal toxicity is strangely silent.

Well, the answer is that I have been forced to work for a living. I mean obviously I've been working for a while but the pace has recently been increased somewhat, and I've been trying to write proper stuff (ho ho) so it's not that my time for blogging has been cut, but my energy for it.

Besides of which the world's own actions recently have revealed that the blogosphere is in fact a haven of sense and reason, and it is the world itself that is the unrestricted, unregulated purveyor of nastiness. Everywhere you look someone is hysterically braying about people who don't agree with them, invoking illness, suffering and death; someone is calling for more death for anyone they feel does not deserve to live; someone is urging the closure of freedoms; someone is denying the existence of freedoms; someone is screwing something up and blaming everyone else. Implicating everyone, crying foul, lying about their own records, screaming cliches and rehashed sententiae to a world which seems too dazzled to care, or too busy to care, or too cynical to care.

I'm almost too afraid to read the newspapers or listen to the radio: not because world events themselves frighten me, but because the people in the media and politics now seem afraid -of what, I don't know: Sarah Palin, maybe, or the fact that so many people just do not care what they think anymore: their privileged positions as dolers out of knowledge, refracted through an educated, elitist standpoint, are under threat, not from argument, or attack, but from apathy. And from the rise of the blogger. Bloggers are still a narrow, self-selected bunch, especially the UK political blogging scene, but they are a blot on the landscape of the opinion professional.

They must be well pissed off that we survived the first attempt to regulate and control us: they'll be back for the next round though.

And - the worst thing, Peter Mandelson is back. I was laughing until I heard the BBC's serious analysis, with Labour people naturally, of the move: fuck me they mean it, they really mean it.

Oh well, as I said, I've been busy. Not really followed the news.

500th post

Across both blogs, is over at the other place. Something to do with polynomials, I think. I'd be surprised, if, over these 500 posts, more than a handful are worth anything. I've become seriously, perhaps irrevocably, disillusioned with the blogosphere and its relentless shrieking and abuse. I've come to agree, though for entirely different reasons, and from an opposite perspective, with those who argued that there was too much bullying in cyberspace. This doesn't mean i am going to stop blogging: far from it. I get more out of typing than before, especially with regard to the maths (it is really helping my revision and if it helps anyone else, all the better). Most of my posts have been snippets, shouty and largely irrelevant. I don't think that really matters to be honest; but if you're looking for really quality posts from this blog, you do have to look quite hard actually. It seems a shame to admit it of one's own creative effort, and i never did set out to compete with DK or Dizzy or Timmy, but you do sometimes think, a la Kevin Pietersen, "what's the point if you're not going to be the best you can be?" (paraphrase) There has never been more blather in the world as there is now, opinions and arguments wherever you look. Opinions are good, very good. But after two years of trawling through the comments boxes of blogs both British and international you do begin to wonder how many hours of your life you will never get back reading people calling each other cunts*. Unlike some I actually like reading about blogging itself because I think it needs a dose of self-reflection; I'd like to see more good writing about blogging and where it could go from here.

* yes, yes, this is the Dalek accusing the Cyberman of not having enough respect for other species...

To The Reader From Wherever

UPDATE: this is a bit unfair, this post. I mean, I spend loads of time on blogs but rarely comment these days because it is so easy to get involved in rows. Sometimes i can't avoid it, being so uncontrollably enraged by whatever, but by and large I just surf n read. So for me to write a post about someone who, according to Sitemeter, reads my blog endlessly and also lives very close by, but doesn't comment, is out of order. I suppose I was just thinking about my general lack of comments. Then again my lack of comments probably reflects my lack of commenting elsewhere, and also the random and pointless-seeming nature of this blog.

So as you can see, I've deleted the post.

Reader, you're welcome. And i hope you found something you liked!

UPDATE 2: Actually, bearing in mind what sitemeter says, and where it is, it might be the government reading me!! Holy moley, could be Labour thinks I am a threat to national security (public safety, maybe). My endless drunken rantings have struck terror into the hearts of our rulers; my incisive and powerful critiques of government excess and the surveillance society have caused me to be targeted; my...

If it is the government then I'd like to amend the above welcome to something else...but I'm too scared.

A thought...

We hear a lot about the idea that left and right don't mean anything these days, that politics is becoming more amorphous, shifting: but if you spend any reasonable amount of time on the political blogs you can see that in fact there is a definite hardening of ideological attitudes (particularly of atheists to Xtians, for some reason), a movement of sorts to the kind of genuine contempt for the act of opposing one's views that we thought had been relegated to the 1980s. I think that this sense of mine (and I mean the UK blogosphere here) is probably exacerbated by the fact that the energetic shouting is carried on by relatively few people, compared to the actual millions of people out there who take rather more moderate views when you speak to them about stuff.

I wonder if the two sides (and there are pretty much two, though there are fuzzy lines and overlaps) are gearing up for a bigger confrontation, another battle for the spirit of the hour? My ex-alter ago, Jim Callaghan once said that every thirty years or so the political landscape shifted and you just got caught in it (or something similar): I think this time, with less popular engagement, the activists (including the bloggers) don't need to appear friendly or consolidating. They can fight among themselves with as much ideological purity and logic as they can muster and whoever emerges the more powerful will carry the rest of the country anyway.

Logic is an interesting element of ultra-modern politics: we are seeing it taken to the ends of rational thought, for the development of rational thought; and if a view is not rational, it is harmful, and if it is harmful, it must disappear. I've always been struck by that phrase of Goldstein (via O Brien, via the narrator, via Orwell): "the general hardening of outlook that set in around 1930", and I can't help thinking that we're heading for another one. Not so physically violent, obviously, but with a violence of attitude and treatment of opponents, with simplistic ideas about what is in people's heads, and how the world should be run.

I've always disagreed with the views of some that there is bullying and aggression in the blogosphere...but I am coming round to this view now. Aggression more than bullying perhaps. Ideological aggression. Debate, in the sense of people with differing views, is being elbowed out by shrieking and abuse.

And I've done my little bit to stoke all this rubbish too. I can't complain about that. I suppose I would say I was a little naive, but I've watched with mounting horror recently the consequences of it, and I think it is more than time for me to stop my part in it.

Every so often i wonder if I should change tack: I think I will. I enjoy blogging, that is the sole reason I do it; I sometimes enjoy political discussion, but less and less. I am going to turn TTD back into what it started as: a vehicle for my thoughts, not a platform, and -

believe it if you dare -

I really am fed up with swearing. I've done it too much, too poorly. It does nothing at all.

So expect from NuTTD:

1) randomness
2) silliness
3) Doctor Who
4) cricket
5) fiction
6) fantasy
7) literature
8) whatever else takes my fancy.*

* expressed in varying tones, but without swearing or aggression.**

**Alright. This is a pledge, an aspiration. Not a promise.

Somehow, also, you are going to have to keep me off the computer after a drink. That's probably the biggest key to it all.

But here, as I've said before several times, are 3 blogs one would be doing REALLY well to emulate:

The Joy of Curmudgeonry
An Insomniac
In Search of High Places

I'm sure Alex won't mind my saying this but things are a little quieter on ISoHP nowadays, as he is very busy with his studies, so Matt is kind of running both blogs (it seems).

Also this blog has lots of meat to it, lots of thinking, and with a really excellent comments policy and "system" too:

Crushed By Ingsoc.


There are lots of others too. I might update this post as I think of them, but I'm off for some maths now.

UPDATE MONDAY: Despite tangling briefly with this blog's author a year or so ago, and despite the fact that this blog is incredibly well known I had managed to completely avoid To Miss With Love. In this case the blog itself is wonderful, although the comments boxes aren't always. But it ought to go on or near my list of brilliantly civilised things to read.

The Information

Look, my last act tonight before going to bed is this. For those of you getting here by googling about harsh fucking and cunts and stuff.

The post you are looking for is a satirical one about SENTENCING for EVIL CRIMES. It has nothing whatsoever to do with sex. My point was that SEVENTEEN YEARS for a BRUTAL, UNPROVOKED MURDER is not really THAT HARSH. The post is IRONIC and REALLY RATHER CONSERVATIVE. It was not intended as AN AID TO MASTURBATION.

So fuck off, will you? It's nothing to do with sex at all, but is instead, a comment on the crapness of a civilised society that cannot be arsed to punish murder unless there's a "hate" motive behind it.

(post is dated 29/3/08 if you're interested).

Normal Service

Well it's very quiet round here. It always has been to some extent but I seem to have reached an impasse in terms of getting people over to read my stuff. I don't really mind, I like being sort of on my own anyway and I write this more for myself than anyone else, but you'd still like a few more Sitemeter clicks - anyone would. I seem to get almost all visitors via CBI and I'm still getting people here who've googled "harsh fuck". I get a few foreigners, Americans mainly, but no big deal. Most click throughs are still some kind of robot I suppose.

I like to write what I like to write but I don't have much of a stomach for the big net rows that kick off on the bigger sites, though I enjoy reading them. Maybe that's the reason I've failed to win any kind of readership. Also I'm pretty inconsistent: I didn't post much in July for example but not working at the moment, I'm flooding the two blogs with drivel.

I wonder if CtS can get a better consistency (the other blog, Completing the Square - click on the link at the side): that after all, is not supposed to be drunk, or swearing, or random, just thoughts on A Level maths. Yes it's pretty specialised but it might get a more regular readership.

Ho hum.

It looks like it might be a nice afternoon. I can't get the gym to pick up the phone.

I wonder if I might go for a walk instead?

I can't sit here blogging all day, that's for sure.

The Orwell Diaries

Tomorrow these go online, published as a blog at The Orwell Diaries. If nothing else, they will be a masterclass in tight, clear expression. I would rather read Orwell on chickens than modern academics on the major issues of the day.

Read 'em.

New Blog!!

Well I never, there's a new blog around.

And I for one, recommend it wholeheartedly!

Target

As I think i have mentioned before, Norm is perhaps the greatest blogger on these islands. He posts with intelligence, wit, verve and tolerance - above all tolerance, the quality that is draining from political and cultural and even scientific discourse like blood from an English batsman's face. I plead guilty of course to being wretchedly intolerant; this tends to make up for my physical and moral weaknesses. But at least I've never told anyone I'll delete their comments if they don't share my views, unlike this clown. (I don't mean DK by the way). Heh - what if we'd heard this in late nineteenth century central Europe:

The debate on Newtonian physics is over. Newtonian scepticism is a morally indefensible position. All "skeptics" are trying to do is spread fear and doubt about Newtonian mechanics.

Actually I think some people did try it but luckily Albert just ignored them.

By the way, in British ufology, "sceptic" means a gentle agnostic type, and "skeptic" means a reverse Fox Mulder who does not want to believe. It sort of takes advantage of the UK and US spellings.

Anyway. Back to Norm. And WotN is the brilliant author Adele Geras, and DotN is the brilliant poet Sophie Hannah, how cool is that. I bet they play fantastic games of scrabble.

Norm posts, while on the idea of government targets for the Olympics thusly:

It's hard to believe I read this, but new legislation now forbids England's cricketers from dropping catches, and all batsmen down to number six in the batting order are to average at least 45 runs per Test innings.

Yes, well, I don't agree there, Norm. You see we have had a voluntary code of practice now since 1877 and I think we can all see that it is not working. We have cricketers being bowled round their legs, caught at point, hooking their first ball off a fast bowler, bowling their first delivery straight to first slip, dropping catches in frankly inconceivable ways, and it is all doing tremendous damage to society. We are reaching a point where people's first reaction to the idea of cricket will be to laugh. And think of the cost to the ECB over the years of this grandstanding incompetence, this binge-failing. No - the time is right for legislation to act in the best interests of cricket and society in general. As part of the legislation we will create the Cricket Commission, headed by Dame Suzi Leather, Lisa Jardine, or someone else with links to NuLab but no interest in or specialised knowledge of cricket at all.


Well anyway. When I was a child, Target was a wonderful word, which implied that there were Doctor Who books that i could buy (Target was the paperback imprint of WH Allen, which published 150 odd novelisations of Doctor Who over twenty odd years). I loved that word, and I loved its connotations: the discovery in the shop, the gentle flick through, the couple of hours of blessed silence on my own devouring this (to me) wholly new adventure of the Doctor. Now, it implies government driven standards, for me and others compulsorily to achieve, enforced by government apparatchiks under the bizarre language twisting labels of "entitlements" and "rights". I find, more often than not, that a child's story will contain nuggets of something: linguistic flair, unusual construction, description, whatever - that was not part of the initial brief. Traditionally I've ignored the brief and concentrated on the genius of the child's work. Now, we're actually ratcheting up the target culture, being endlessly focused, judging the work of infinite imaginations on narrow sets of criteria. It is the managerialising of creation. It doesn't matter how kindly you put it, or how many vivid colours you use on the child's work: it's come down from business and management and it is being stamped, like the boot, on the faces of those who actually do have an insight into life - namely, children.

A Target novel - yesterday


You can tell by this semi-plagiaristic waffle that i am still poorly and feeling sorry for myself. I have not eaten a meal now in 38.75 hours and my guts are still churning like I have just eaten a massive curry at that place Viz always used to promote.

On Pseudonymity

Forgive me if I derive this post entirely from one by CBI on the subject of identity. He outs himself, with, in his view, good reason. I will not presume to comment on his decision.

I am not outing myself: firstly I do not accept any ethical principle that says you must identify yourself to have a view - very few societies have ever accepted this and we seem to find enough value from Anglo Saxon poetry without whinging about the identities of its writers. Either the writing has interest, or it doesn't. It smacks of a different, controlling impulse to demand that people give you personal information before you consent to read their writings. Of course, it is your right to demand that, just as it the writer's right to refuse. Even in the semi-anarchy of the blogosphere, we still hold to market values. Yay.

Secondly, as might be guessed, I am a raving idiot and I don't especially want everyone in my life to know this. I am happy with some people knowing it (two, to be precise) but everyone else can fuck right off, as a narcissist I want a public space to go on and on about all sorts of crap without anyone saying "ew, I don't think much of your blog..." well tough - fuck off. You're not even going to find out so you can piss right off.

Also, of course, I can swear. I love swearing. It gives me such a sense of futile transgression and belated but wholly stereotypical rebellion.

As a teacher I also have this lovely space where I am not expected to be a socialist. This is a relief beyond belief. I can say "Mrs Thatcher was great" and I don't need to say "THAtcher", spitting the entire contents of my saliva gland onto the grateful listener (it is interesting how people love to see you flobbing the great woman's name). I don't need to make excuses for Jim Callaghan, or go on and on about how wonderful the UK was in 1945, 1950, 1966, etc and how 1979 was in fact the peak of a settled, equal society.

These things are nigh on compulsory in education. It is a myth that private school teachers are less lefty. They just think state schools are for all the other fuckers, not them. I have had some truly bizarre, recursive arguments with colleagues in a private school who would tell me private education was wrong but could not, for the life of them, see what was wrong with their working in the system.

Some of them even lived in private roads. But they thought making any decisions on your children's education was evil.

Anyway. I stay pseudonymous for the final, and most important reason: I like it, it gives me pleasure.

So there.