Well I see that Jack Jones has died. Despite disagreeing with pretty much everything the old man believed, including that mass non-democratic organisations (which could compel an individual to join and which had no method of secret ballot) had the right to bring down democratically elected governments, he was one of the last of the ascetic leftists who used to dominate, generally for ill but for a kind of good-natured ill, the politics of this country. Let us be clear: Jack Jones was not for fat bastard MPs luxuriously feathering their own second nests with taxpayer funded porn; nor was he in favour of giving entry to government to people who had simply supported it: no, for better and largely worse, he was a leader of working people and led them according to his principles. We may have forgotten these: but in essence the word "principles" means " a set of deeply held beliefs", and Jack Jones worked with this bizarre concept, sometimes to the enrichment of his followers, sometimes to their disadvantage, but always with a view of what was right, even when it was wrong. At no stage did Jack Jones say "oh fuck it I'll just take what I can fucking get" like everyone in public life does now. Well yes he did "meet" representatives of the USSR, but what can you do? - The whole left was so utterly compromised by its half-hearted understanding of democracy that he was about as good as the bastards came (and continue to come today).
Anyway.
What if things had been different: if Jack Jones and his ilk had prevented, at the point of another anti-democratic strike, the proto-monetarist government (yes I know he supported it) of 1976-9 taking effect? What if we had slipped into outright socialism in 1976? Say at a flashpoint in the IMF thing..like, ooh, I dunno, November 1976? Around the 17th?
And from that date had the government stuck two fingers up to the IMF and embraced collective bargaining type socialism?
Come 1981, say, does anyone really think the country would have been at ease with itself? That the riots of 1981 would have never happened?
What, I wonder, would have been the case in, say, November 1981? Who would have rioted and why? Who would have got on and put their heads down?
What would have been the State of the Nation?
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Monday, 29 December 2008
Living In The Ice Age
Well what the hell is there to this number - 2008?
I'll tell you. Nothing at all. There is nothing to this number at all:-
no blossoming oak, no muddy field full of young leaves, no rippling water sipped by lambs, no tumbling beech, no lime hanging in the breeze, no river scudding on in the long wind, no mallard skipping the current, no robin copping an eyeful on the nearest bare branch.
There is nothing here you'd care to see: no hands slipping out of touch, no missed glances, no desires shaping into the clouds, no love unspoken in stones, no sighs given by thrown twigs or rocks, no resentments that a stranger hasn't supped in his breath as he walks past.
What is there to your year?
There is nothing.
Nothing at all.
I'll tell you. Nothing at all. There is nothing to this number at all:-
no blossoming oak, no muddy field full of young leaves, no rippling water sipped by lambs, no tumbling beech, no lime hanging in the breeze, no river scudding on in the long wind, no mallard skipping the current, no robin copping an eyeful on the nearest bare branch.
There is nothing here you'd care to see: no hands slipping out of touch, no missed glances, no desires shaping into the clouds, no love unspoken in stones, no sighs given by thrown twigs or rocks, no resentments that a stranger hasn't supped in his breath as he walks past.
What is there to your year?
There is nothing.
Nothing at all.
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Explanation
If you didn't get my previous post.
One of those things that haunts the memory.
But if you are too young...this is it:
Or you might know it like this:
Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.
Life goes on.
So they say.
One of those things that haunts the memory.
But if you are too young...this is it:
Or you might know it like this:
Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me.
Life goes on.
So they say.
Clipper Maid of the Seas
Fucking hell.
It is my greatest fear.
And it did actually happen: to 249 people. So many of them found to be scratching the seats or holding hands or holding crucifixes.
I remember the newsflash. Michael Burke: the helpline number: the Christmas tree in the corner of the room.
This is why I hate horror films: they are the worst of what humans actually do to each other - they are not fantasy.
It is my greatest fear.
And it did actually happen: to 249 people. So many of them found to be scratching the seats or holding hands or holding crucifixes.
I remember the newsflash. Michael Burke: the helpline number: the Christmas tree in the corner of the room.
This is why I hate horror films: they are the worst of what humans actually do to each other - they are not fantasy.
Sunday, 9 November 2008
Wrong Again, Eric
He's at it again, Britain's oldest unrepetant communist once again predicting the downfall of capitalism, just like he did in his terrible book The Age of Extremes.
A word to the not-wise, Eric: it ain't gonna happen. No-one's going back to the socialism you love because it was an oppressive crock of shit with a brilliant record for pig-iron production but bugger all else. Capitalism might well adapt, as it has done before; it might incorporate aspects of socialism, or at least progressivism, as it has done before; but it ain't going away.
Every time someone has something to sell and someone else wants to buy it there's capitalism. However it modifies itself, however we choose to regulate it, it will survive better and for longer than his beloved socialism managed.
A word to the not-wise, Eric: it ain't gonna happen. No-one's going back to the socialism you love because it was an oppressive crock of shit with a brilliant record for pig-iron production but bugger all else. Capitalism might well adapt, as it has done before; it might incorporate aspects of socialism, or at least progressivism, as it has done before; but it ain't going away.
Every time someone has something to sell and someone else wants to buy it there's capitalism. However it modifies itself, however we choose to regulate it, it will survive better and for longer than his beloved socialism managed.
Saturday, 6 September 2008
Call that a recession? Cah.
This is quite a good article until the last, rubbish, bloatedly biased sentence, which I would challenge anyone to prove is the authentic voice of the impartial BBC.
But it does make me laugh, when I read those awful history books about the champions of social justice and fairness, and how awful and uncaring the Tories are:
It was the month the dead went not just unburied, but were left on wards for hours at a time. When hospital managers struggled to find a way of coping with bodies that were starting to decompose. When ambulance drivers refused to answer emergency calls, and pickets on the dockside blocked the unloading of drugs needed for chemotherapy.
You see, this is all ok, for the leaders of the TUC, because they
were provoked by a substantial cuts in their real wages and by what they saw as the government's absolute refusal to recognise the importance of their role in society by paying them a decent wage.
But I thought they were motivated by love of humanity, and the public? And yet they were prepared to kill people, to get higher wages?
But it does make me laugh, when I read those awful history books about the champions of social justice and fairness, and how awful and uncaring the Tories are:
It was the month the dead went not just unburied, but were left on wards for hours at a time. When hospital managers struggled to find a way of coping with bodies that were starting to decompose. When ambulance drivers refused to answer emergency calls, and pickets on the dockside blocked the unloading of drugs needed for chemotherapy.
You see, this is all ok, for the leaders of the TUC, because they
were provoked by a substantial cuts in their real wages and by what they saw as the government's absolute refusal to recognise the importance of their role in society by paying them a decent wage.
But I thought they were motivated by love of humanity, and the public? And yet they were prepared to kill people, to get higher wages?
Thursday, 31 July 2008
Blogging Controls
Loads of people are currently blogging about the latest attempt by the authoritarian left (you know them, they're the ones who talk about "freedom" and who really don't buy the whole freedom of speech thing, and who think that my rights not to be persecuted or suspected by the state are not as important as your right not to have someone else attack you, whatever that means), to fuck the conservative blogosphere.
Well, look to Canada. It's been underway for years and they damn nearly won. If only Ezra Levant hadn't kicked up such a fuss, and hadn't protested so loudly about being persecuted by a quasi-legal body with the power to exact extra-judicial punishments to last the rest of your life, who make you pay the costs of your defence while the complainants get money from, er, you; if only people had not been fooled by the left's arguments about its flexibility being its strength (ie the fact that it is not constrained by law); if only people had agreed with one or two notable Canadian leftists that Mr Levant should of shut his gob and accepted his punishments, and bought the whole left narrative that people opposed to this appalling abuse of power were anti human rights in general and just, you know, bad; if only that had never happened, they would have won.
They would.
They still might win. We know, from experience of "independent" bodies like the Charities Commission that the first things these regulators go after are old style left wing targets. You can bet your final euro cent that if such a law were imposed it would only be rightish blogs subject to its constraints, for only they could be considered to show hate (after all, some people deserve hate (C. H Harman)), only they would be expected to account for themselves.
We know that such a law, or such a "code", or such a regulatory body, would command the death of free speech online, to enable the left to conform all typed speech to its own prejudices: hate of Christians,of men, of rich people (all the oppressor people, basically - you know, those people who definitely are privileged, whatever has happened in their own lives ( c. H Harman) - would be ok. And "hate" of the left's client groups would be defined as "any statement that the key pressure organisations of X-group disagree with", as it more or less is anyway.
It would fuck, permanently, opposition to anything the left loves.
Do not believe the opinion polls. They mean nothing. The left is not about to give up the reins of power: over the state broadcaster, over education, over all public services including police and judiciary, over academia. IF the Tories win the election we will go on as before unless something deeply radical is done.
For the left write history, which is why the history books tell us how unlucky I was (Jim Callaghan), but how evil Mrs T was; how the unions were blameless; how shadowy right wing groups brought down lovely lefty governments in the 70s and how wicked electoral rules deprived Labour of victory in 1992 (yes, I've read this). The left are already writing this period: global conditions, nothing Labour could do, positive social legislation, key evidence based action, nothing Labour could do, good relations with Europe, nothing Labour could do.
And so on.
Nothing Labour could do: the stock tale of the postwar history book. It barely matters who you read, the story is the same.
Unless the Tories can cut this cancer out of the body-history-politic, it will all happen again, and David Cameron's government will be the 2nd most wicked in history, and Gordon Brown's the 2nd most sinned against.
Well, look to Canada. It's been underway for years and they damn nearly won. If only Ezra Levant hadn't kicked up such a fuss, and hadn't protested so loudly about being persecuted by a quasi-legal body with the power to exact extra-judicial punishments to last the rest of your life, who make you pay the costs of your defence while the complainants get money from, er, you; if only people had not been fooled by the left's arguments about its flexibility being its strength (ie the fact that it is not constrained by law); if only people had agreed with one or two notable Canadian leftists that Mr Levant should of shut his gob and accepted his punishments, and bought the whole left narrative that people opposed to this appalling abuse of power were anti human rights in general and just, you know, bad; if only that had never happened, they would have won.
They would.
They still might win. We know, from experience of "independent" bodies like the Charities Commission that the first things these regulators go after are old style left wing targets. You can bet your final euro cent that if such a law were imposed it would only be rightish blogs subject to its constraints, for only they could be considered to show hate (after all, some people deserve hate (C. H Harman)), only they would be expected to account for themselves.
We know that such a law, or such a "code", or such a regulatory body, would command the death of free speech online, to enable the left to conform all typed speech to its own prejudices: hate of Christians,of men, of rich people (all the oppressor people, basically - you know, those people who definitely are privileged, whatever has happened in their own lives ( c. H Harman) - would be ok. And "hate" of the left's client groups would be defined as "any statement that the key pressure organisations of X-group disagree with", as it more or less is anyway.
It would fuck, permanently, opposition to anything the left loves.
Do not believe the opinion polls. They mean nothing. The left is not about to give up the reins of power: over the state broadcaster, over education, over all public services including police and judiciary, over academia. IF the Tories win the election we will go on as before unless something deeply radical is done.
For the left write history, which is why the history books tell us how unlucky I was (Jim Callaghan), but how evil Mrs T was; how the unions were blameless; how shadowy right wing groups brought down lovely lefty governments in the 70s and how wicked electoral rules deprived Labour of victory in 1992 (yes, I've read this). The left are already writing this period: global conditions, nothing Labour could do, positive social legislation, key evidence based action, nothing Labour could do, good relations with Europe, nothing Labour could do.
And so on.
Nothing Labour could do: the stock tale of the postwar history book. It barely matters who you read, the story is the same.
Unless the Tories can cut this cancer out of the body-history-politic, it will all happen again, and David Cameron's government will be the 2nd most wicked in history, and Gordon Brown's the 2nd most sinned against.
Friday, 6 June 2008
D Day
Yes I know.
Yes I did teach it to my pupils.
Yes they did write some *really* good stuff.
And it's Henry Allingham's birthday, the Oldest Man in Europe: he is 112 and was in the RAF in WWI.
These are, and were, *great men*, whether they wanted to be or not.
Amen to you guys, and everything you did.
Yes I did teach it to my pupils.
Yes they did write some *really* good stuff.
And it's Henry Allingham's birthday, the Oldest Man in Europe: he is 112 and was in the RAF in WWI.
These are, and were, *great men*, whether they wanted to be or not.
Amen to you guys, and everything you did.
Sunday, 1 June 2008
Don't Waste Your Non Tax Payer Funded Money on This Book
--From Anger to Apathy by David Garnett.
This cost me twenty fucking quid for a piece of shit that even the author admits he more or less came up with in 1980, before he'd done any fucking research. Jeesus, why do these lefty twats keep giving us the same shit, year after year, why do they pass off the same bias, the same pseudo-intellectual "theorising" as impartial history, while slagging everyone else off for bias? Why don't they ever admit any blame on the part of the left? Why are there always these little mini-histories of evil rightwingers (let me guess - in the histories of 20 years' time there'll be just the same nasty little chapters on Nadine Dorries instead of Ross McWhirter)? Why do they insist on couching blatantly partisan points in neutral-sounding terms? Do they *really* think that the public was fed up in the late 1970s because they were blinded by greed instead of loving social justice (which is never, damnit, never properly defined)? Why do these histories always tell the same stories of good, honest Labour governments brought down by shadowy media-MI5-USA led conspiracies? Why was their only fault not to be lefty enough?
Why are good, non-socialist histories of Britain so damn hard to come by?
Listen Garnett, you twat, we're not socialists and we're not deluded. We're not passive drones led by the evil Murdoch empire or the dastardly Daily Mail, we just don't like socialism and we don't fucking want it. OK? It's fascinating how much the "stupid" or "passive" public features in the narratives of the academic left. Constantly betrayed by cynical Conservatives, or self interest media, the public either act in bad faith or through ignorance. You see the problem is they've never gone for socialism. Hence they've made a massive error.
Being consumers makes us active, not passive, we LIKE having choice, it's made life a lot easier since milk had to be sold by the Milk Marketing Board; it's made people in charge of their own damn lives, whereas all you wanted was sex and abortion on demand; that was supposed to be enough to shut everyone the fuck up, wasn't it? You want us to accept the loss of electricity whenever some union or other deems it necessary, and you call that social justice?? Jesus you are either really fucking stupid or just damn dishonest.
No. The public was not fooled in the late 1970s. It was betrayed by a weak, incompetent government too close to selfish and anti-democratic unions to be able to make a difference. Historians like Garnett just don't give a toss about the majority of the population who were not members of the powerful unions and who just had to damn well do what those bastards told them...and they call it "social justice".
Fuck me. Vote Thatcher. Vote Thatcher now.
This cost me twenty fucking quid for a piece of shit that even the author admits he more or less came up with in 1980, before he'd done any fucking research. Jeesus, why do these lefty twats keep giving us the same shit, year after year, why do they pass off the same bias, the same pseudo-intellectual "theorising" as impartial history, while slagging everyone else off for bias? Why don't they ever admit any blame on the part of the left? Why are there always these little mini-histories of evil rightwingers (let me guess - in the histories of 20 years' time there'll be just the same nasty little chapters on Nadine Dorries instead of Ross McWhirter)? Why do they insist on couching blatantly partisan points in neutral-sounding terms? Do they *really* think that the public was fed up in the late 1970s because they were blinded by greed instead of loving social justice (which is never, damnit, never properly defined)? Why do these histories always tell the same stories of good, honest Labour governments brought down by shadowy media-MI5-USA led conspiracies? Why was their only fault not to be lefty enough?
Why are good, non-socialist histories of Britain so damn hard to come by?
Listen Garnett, you twat, we're not socialists and we're not deluded. We're not passive drones led by the evil Murdoch empire or the dastardly Daily Mail, we just don't like socialism and we don't fucking want it. OK? It's fascinating how much the "stupid" or "passive" public features in the narratives of the academic left. Constantly betrayed by cynical Conservatives, or self interest media, the public either act in bad faith or through ignorance. You see the problem is they've never gone for socialism. Hence they've made a massive error.
Being consumers makes us active, not passive, we LIKE having choice, it's made life a lot easier since milk had to be sold by the Milk Marketing Board; it's made people in charge of their own damn lives, whereas all you wanted was sex and abortion on demand; that was supposed to be enough to shut everyone the fuck up, wasn't it? You want us to accept the loss of electricity whenever some union or other deems it necessary, and you call that social justice?? Jesus you are either really fucking stupid or just damn dishonest.
No. The public was not fooled in the late 1970s. It was betrayed by a weak, incompetent government too close to selfish and anti-democratic unions to be able to make a difference. Historians like Garnett just don't give a toss about the majority of the population who were not members of the powerful unions and who just had to damn well do what those bastards told them...and they call it "social justice".
Fuck me. Vote Thatcher. Vote Thatcher now.
Friday, 30 May 2008
Left Wing Histories
Which make up, alack, the vast majority of published works on post-war Britain, are to be avoided at all costs, for they never, ever, say anything new or interesting.
Here is a ten point guide to the average "People's" or "New" or "Cultural" history of Britain, 1945-2000:
1) People were nice before 1979. During this period, most people (apart from the right wing press and the paranoid agents of the state) were in favour of social justice. Social justice means very high taxation, excellent wage deals for the public sector, and, generally, successful strikes. This point stands despite the fact that most people were racist, sexist, homophobic fucks, before 1997.
2) The "media" are uniformly against left wing politics, and have engaged in a vast number of intricate conspiracies to bring down said politics since 1945. This is despite the will of the people, except where it is with the will of the people, in which case the people are fucking bastards. Examples include: Harold Wilson, who was in no way paranoid, but was a real victim of an extreme right wing country (in which case why the fuck was he PM then); John Stonehouse (in no way a criminal, more a victim of the right wing press); and, of course, Tony Benn, misinterpreted as a proto-Commie since 1966.
3) Conservatives are cynical, Labour supporters "idealistic". This is a key, recurring trope in lefty histories of Britain. The "Tories" have always and everywhere, cleverly used their total control of the media (see above) to defeat the will of the People. Elections won by Labour attract no comment, elections won by "The TORIES" are because of unfair voting systems.
4) Trade Unions were the victims of a cynical population hungry for personal greed over personal justice. Nuff Said.
5)Left Wing extremists are just comedians, whereas right wing extremists are nasty fuckers. Leaving aside the fact that the IRA, the Angry Brigade, and the Baader Meinhof Gang were all variants of lefties, this seems a bit crap anyway when your best argument is that Ross McWhirter kept some "dodgy" political company.
6) The IRA were forced to bomb loads of innocent civilians. See above.
7) Everyone before 1997 was a racist fucker. Common proofs of this thesis include: The Black and White Minstrel Show, Love thy Neighbour, the NF, and anyone who happened to say anything lefties don't agree with now. This, apparently, proves that we are much nicer people now. And guess what's to blame....
8) Greed. The 80s were totally about greed, and in no way about trying to improve yourself and your family, and even if they were that is fucking well bad enough, you selfish bunch of cunts. Everyone carried MASSIVE mobile phones and wore REALLY SHARP SUITS apart from the three million who didn't even have a job. So on the one hand everyone was really poor, and on the other hand everyone was a greedy fucker. By the way, success=greed; so anyone earning over an arbitrary sum an average lefty historian considers "enough" is a cunt. Or "was" a cunt, as these fuckers are almost certainly all dead of a greed induced coronary by now. By the way anyone who didn't support 46% pay claims by certain unions was a selfish fucking cunt, whether or not he was a self-employed nobody working *exactly* to the timetables of the unions in 1973. SO it goes that the argument was between those interested in social justice, and those keen on loading themselves with Bentleys and 24 carat gold. There was no in between. By definition.
9) Before *spits* Thatcher, everyone agreed that the State should run all industries for our benefit, and that people should just shut the fuck up, pay their taxes, get what they're given, and like it. Or be fascist bastards. And as anyone who drove an Austin Allegro, Maxi, Princess, Ambassador; a Rover SD; knows, nationalised car industries produced indisputably brilliant vehicles. After that bitch, some top-hatted cunts made us think that only the rich had the right to anything at all. Thatcher herself famously said that the poor should die and painfully[subs- find ref, will you, I'm off to the pub].
10) Doctor Who was loads better under "The Consensus" than after.
Point No10 is, I am afraid, easily refuted: in Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor says, being urged by Sarah to destroy the embryonic Daleks: "Do I have the right?" and, in fact does not do it: a Dalek does, belatedly. Under our liberated regime, he would of said: "Of course I have the ****ing right, are you a ****ing extremist or something???" Subsequently he would have ditched Sarah as "Insane-Sar" and led a galactic campaign against anti-Dalekists, writing articles in Gallifrey Guardian against her. And rightly so. Anti-Dalekists have far too much power, indeed are parasites (c the BROTHER damn his government-shilling hide, of the AUTHOR of REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS*)
Well, despite the unfortunate expression of right-wing extremism in Genesis of the Daleks: VOTE WILSON!
Through a timewarp. As I am about to do. In 1964, 1966, NOT 1970, Feb 1974, NOT Oct 1974. Oooh, I'd get such a turn-on voting Wilson in Feb 74. Holey Moley my post-war political interest has become pornographic, I do believe I am getting a 26.8% bone on - hey Hal, you can inflate me by that much in August 1975 alright!!! Obviously I'll vote Heath with some reluctance in Oct 74 but I'm sure you'll understand my decision: I don't really fancy another Christmas by candlelight (yes yes, ok so the last one was under the Tories) but these clowns have done nothing to prevent it, and the NUM and other unions are supposed to be their mates. They're supposed to have the ears of the union leaders (and this was supposed to be a parliamentary democracy -2008 Ed).
Also I'd NOT VOTE CALLAGHAN IN MAY 1979 if this requires my execution then fair enough. I'd vote (shield your sensitive socialist eyes, dear reader) THATCHER (oooh, couldn't you just hear me say it????? Even with your eyes closed???)
But I would have voted Callaghan in 1977. Not 1978, but 1977; then it still looked as if Labour could achieve what the Tories (ssssssss!!!) never would be able to. This, again, is a weird point against a democratic society; that you would vote for a party, or not, based on its record of taking on non-democratic institutions: such as those that had, bizarrely, power over who an employer could only employ people based on their union affiliation (it is TRULY alien to a free society that a union could demand your membership before it let you join the employ of a third party; it is weird that a union could think a secret ballot undemocratic; it is sinister that a union should demand the right to prevent people who do not belong to to it from working). No, I would have voted Labour in 1977: out of sheer defeatism. In 1978 I would have begun to waver but would not have voted Thatcher; in 1979 I would voted Thatcher whatever 21st century leftwing historians were later to make of her views on race. Oddly enough this is now really important among "social" historians of the late twentieth century: the views of leftwing politicians who truly believed that British people should not be able to vote for different parties, or own their own houses, or make money, or do anything for their children beyond aborting them are rather less publicised.
As far as I know Mrs Thatcher never professed her admiration for a regime which had deliberately and knowingly murdered millions of its citizens: hence, unlike Tony Benn (another fact which *always* escapes lefty historians) she earns my support. Yes she supported Pinochet but against those who always thought that Soviet Russia was alright, and by the standards of the cold war, it's somewhat small-fry. I'd love (St Eric of) Hobsbawm to explain to me why millions of deaths in the service of socialism were ok but Pincohet's Chile was an abomination. She (Thatcher, not Eric) loses it for what happened in the first half of the 1980s; she loses my respect and support for that dire, terrible period of alienation that continues to blight us today: but, like Eric Hobsbawm on a rather smaller scale, I will never be a trophy for anti-capitalists, and I don't have 20 million deaths on my conscience.
But Mrs Thatcher made my childhood; she brought me up amid the violence, the hate and the threat of melted milk bottles. Mrs Thatcher was not my milk snatcher; Mr Callaghan, Mr Benn and Mr Foot were my milk snatchers: men who apparently "believed" that not being in a union made you a cunt, that being a miserable little cocksucker who just wanted to pay the fucking bills made you a selfish fucking bastard. The hate and the violence, was, of course, the produce of Messrs Attle, Macmillan, Wilson and Heath as much as it was of Mrs Thatcher: but oddly enough, when things went bad, all turned out to have been rosy in the post-imperial garden until those fucking(monetarist) Tories turned up, like a rash of nettles.
Well, Mr Foot, Mr Benn: your boys will be dealt one hell of a beating come 2010: and if the Tories have any sense at all, they will scour the universities for, and purge them of, the scumbags that to this day proclaim that wanting your family to be comfortable is grossly irresponsible selfishness. Hopefully they will impale, alive, those life-sucking academics who believe they have a right to tell every other fucker what to think while taking the taxes of all those bastard (capitalist) voters, with their little small businesses, their internet operations, their stupid ideas for money making schemes: because lefties know better don't they? They know all you fuckers are just cunts, that you should be destroyed while you pay for their little articles, their closed-shop journals, their air of total smugness.
Fuck them. Despite my authoritarian old Tory tendencies, fuck all public-parasites, destroy all tenured twats, kill all of those arsewitted historians who all preach to the same, tiny audience, and receive all the plaudits that the daily shrinking audience of the Guardian can muster.
Fuck them right off, and let's build a world we actually want, not a world we're told we want.
For a start we can slash taxes on sex.
You mean there aren't...what the.......oh. I'll get my...er...
*Fuck me are you an idiot or something: David Aaronovitch.
Here is a ten point guide to the average "People's" or "New" or "Cultural" history of Britain, 1945-2000:
1) People were nice before 1979. During this period, most people (apart from the right wing press and the paranoid agents of the state) were in favour of social justice. Social justice means very high taxation, excellent wage deals for the public sector, and, generally, successful strikes. This point stands despite the fact that most people were racist, sexist, homophobic fucks, before 1997.
2) The "media" are uniformly against left wing politics, and have engaged in a vast number of intricate conspiracies to bring down said politics since 1945. This is despite the will of the people, except where it is with the will of the people, in which case the people are fucking bastards. Examples include: Harold Wilson, who was in no way paranoid, but was a real victim of an extreme right wing country (in which case why the fuck was he PM then); John Stonehouse (in no way a criminal, more a victim of the right wing press); and, of course, Tony Benn, misinterpreted as a proto-Commie since 1966.
3) Conservatives are cynical, Labour supporters "idealistic". This is a key, recurring trope in lefty histories of Britain. The "Tories" have always and everywhere, cleverly used their total control of the media (see above) to defeat the will of the People. Elections won by Labour attract no comment, elections won by "The TORIES" are because of unfair voting systems.
4) Trade Unions were the victims of a cynical population hungry for personal greed over personal justice. Nuff Said.
5)Left Wing extremists are just comedians, whereas right wing extremists are nasty fuckers. Leaving aside the fact that the IRA, the Angry Brigade, and the Baader Meinhof Gang were all variants of lefties, this seems a bit crap anyway when your best argument is that Ross McWhirter kept some "dodgy" political company.
6) The IRA were forced to bomb loads of innocent civilians. See above.
7) Everyone before 1997 was a racist fucker. Common proofs of this thesis include: The Black and White Minstrel Show, Love thy Neighbour, the NF, and anyone who happened to say anything lefties don't agree with now. This, apparently, proves that we are much nicer people now. And guess what's to blame....
8) Greed. The 80s were totally about greed, and in no way about trying to improve yourself and your family, and even if they were that is fucking well bad enough, you selfish bunch of cunts. Everyone carried MASSIVE mobile phones and wore REALLY SHARP SUITS apart from the three million who didn't even have a job. So on the one hand everyone was really poor, and on the other hand everyone was a greedy fucker. By the way, success=greed; so anyone earning over an arbitrary sum an average lefty historian considers "enough" is a cunt. Or "was" a cunt, as these fuckers are almost certainly all dead of a greed induced coronary by now. By the way anyone who didn't support 46% pay claims by certain unions was a selfish fucking cunt, whether or not he was a self-employed nobody working *exactly* to the timetables of the unions in 1973. SO it goes that the argument was between those interested in social justice, and those keen on loading themselves with Bentleys and 24 carat gold. There was no in between. By definition.
9) Before *spits* Thatcher, everyone agreed that the State should run all industries for our benefit, and that people should just shut the fuck up, pay their taxes, get what they're given, and like it. Or be fascist bastards. And as anyone who drove an Austin Allegro, Maxi, Princess, Ambassador; a Rover SD; knows, nationalised car industries produced indisputably brilliant vehicles. After that bitch, some top-hatted cunts made us think that only the rich had the right to anything at all. Thatcher herself famously said that the poor should die and painfully[subs- find ref, will you, I'm off to the pub].
10) Doctor Who was loads better under "The Consensus" than after.
Point No10 is, I am afraid, easily refuted: in Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor says, being urged by Sarah to destroy the embryonic Daleks: "Do I have the right?" and, in fact does not do it: a Dalek does, belatedly. Under our liberated regime, he would of said: "Of course I have the ****ing right, are you a ****ing extremist or something???" Subsequently he would have ditched Sarah as "Insane-Sar" and led a galactic campaign against anti-Dalekists, writing articles in Gallifrey Guardian against her. And rightly so. Anti-Dalekists have far too much power, indeed are parasites (c the BROTHER damn his government-shilling hide, of the AUTHOR of REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS*)
Well, despite the unfortunate expression of right-wing extremism in Genesis of the Daleks: VOTE WILSON!
Through a timewarp. As I am about to do. In 1964, 1966, NOT 1970, Feb 1974, NOT Oct 1974. Oooh, I'd get such a turn-on voting Wilson in Feb 74. Holey Moley my post-war political interest has become pornographic, I do believe I am getting a 26.8% bone on - hey Hal, you can inflate me by that much in August 1975 alright!!! Obviously I'll vote Heath with some reluctance in Oct 74 but I'm sure you'll understand my decision: I don't really fancy another Christmas by candlelight (yes yes, ok so the last one was under the Tories) but these clowns have done nothing to prevent it, and the NUM and other unions are supposed to be their mates. They're supposed to have the ears of the union leaders (and this was supposed to be a parliamentary democracy -2008 Ed).
Also I'd NOT VOTE CALLAGHAN IN MAY 1979 if this requires my execution then fair enough. I'd vote (shield your sensitive socialist eyes, dear reader) THATCHER (oooh, couldn't you just hear me say it????? Even with your eyes closed???)
But I would have voted Callaghan in 1977. Not 1978, but 1977; then it still looked as if Labour could achieve what the Tories (ssssssss!!!) never would be able to. This, again, is a weird point against a democratic society; that you would vote for a party, or not, based on its record of taking on non-democratic institutions: such as those that had, bizarrely, power over who an employer could only employ people based on their union affiliation (it is TRULY alien to a free society that a union could demand your membership before it let you join the employ of a third party; it is weird that a union could think a secret ballot undemocratic; it is sinister that a union should demand the right to prevent people who do not belong to to it from working). No, I would have voted Labour in 1977: out of sheer defeatism. In 1978 I would have begun to waver but would not have voted Thatcher; in 1979 I would voted Thatcher whatever 21st century leftwing historians were later to make of her views on race. Oddly enough this is now really important among "social" historians of the late twentieth century: the views of leftwing politicians who truly believed that British people should not be able to vote for different parties, or own their own houses, or make money, or do anything for their children beyond aborting them are rather less publicised.
As far as I know Mrs Thatcher never professed her admiration for a regime which had deliberately and knowingly murdered millions of its citizens: hence, unlike Tony Benn (another fact which *always* escapes lefty historians) she earns my support. Yes she supported Pinochet but against those who always thought that Soviet Russia was alright, and by the standards of the cold war, it's somewhat small-fry. I'd love (St Eric of) Hobsbawm to explain to me why millions of deaths in the service of socialism were ok but Pincohet's Chile was an abomination. She (Thatcher, not Eric) loses it for what happened in the first half of the 1980s; she loses my respect and support for that dire, terrible period of alienation that continues to blight us today: but, like Eric Hobsbawm on a rather smaller scale, I will never be a trophy for anti-capitalists, and I don't have 20 million deaths on my conscience.
But Mrs Thatcher made my childhood; she brought me up amid the violence, the hate and the threat of melted milk bottles. Mrs Thatcher was not my milk snatcher; Mr Callaghan, Mr Benn and Mr Foot were my milk snatchers: men who apparently "believed" that not being in a union made you a cunt, that being a miserable little cocksucker who just wanted to pay the fucking bills made you a selfish fucking bastard. The hate and the violence, was, of course, the produce of Messrs Attle, Macmillan, Wilson and Heath as much as it was of Mrs Thatcher: but oddly enough, when things went bad, all turned out to have been rosy in the post-imperial garden until those fucking(monetarist) Tories turned up, like a rash of nettles.
Well, Mr Foot, Mr Benn: your boys will be dealt one hell of a beating come 2010: and if the Tories have any sense at all, they will scour the universities for, and purge them of, the scumbags that to this day proclaim that wanting your family to be comfortable is grossly irresponsible selfishness. Hopefully they will impale, alive, those life-sucking academics who believe they have a right to tell every other fucker what to think while taking the taxes of all those bastard (capitalist) voters, with their little small businesses, their internet operations, their stupid ideas for money making schemes: because lefties know better don't they? They know all you fuckers are just cunts, that you should be destroyed while you pay for their little articles, their closed-shop journals, their air of total smugness.
Fuck them. Despite my authoritarian old Tory tendencies, fuck all public-parasites, destroy all tenured twats, kill all of those arsewitted historians who all preach to the same, tiny audience, and receive all the plaudits that the daily shrinking audience of the Guardian can muster.
Fuck them right off, and let's build a world we actually want, not a world we're told we want.
For a start we can slash taxes on sex.
You mean there aren't...what the.......oh. I'll get my...er...
*Fuck me are you an idiot or something: David Aaronovitch.
Friday, 23 May 2008
Next You'll Be Telling Me It's 1990
Which is what the Tories are effectively saying at the moment, politically and economically. There are two reasons why this is a bad idea.
1) It ain't.
2) 1990 was under their watch.
I say "under their watch" rather than "their fault", even though we all know that 15% (for two minutes in September 1992) interest rates &c &c were all the responsibility of the Conservative Government and Mrs Thatcher, whereas the current problems are global and nothing to do with Labour.
Lest we forget, life was actually *utterly shit* in 1990, whether or not you blame the Tories. The UK was on the verge of another wave of riots, which in fact dissipated into the endless whinging "radicalism" of the 1990s and 2000s but apart from one instance in March 1990 didn't quite fulfil its "potential". The property bubble had well and truly fucked itself, leaving shedloads of people out of work & home, and Nigel Lawson looking like a post-resignation cunt. Inflation went on its merry way towards 10% (which I think it reached in the autumn - in those days I was fascinated by the 26% it had reached in August 1975). The weather was wholly fucked, with one day of my school life being devoted to watching trees having their backs broken by a hurricane while the howls of a nuclear firestorm whirled overheard (or that's how it sounded). In the summer the bastard sun never seemed to set, the fucker just going on and on. England lost on penalties for the first fucking time. Mrs Thatcher was wholly powerless and quite out of touch, unable to set any kind of agenda as first Lawson (89 I think) and then, devastatingly, Howe, turned the knife; in Howe's case, during a televised Parliamentary debate, with Thatch listening not quite impassively from the front bench. All this was achieved without Neil Kinnock needing to draw breath. Even then he was a self-satisfied bastard and even my 13 year old self knew he had fuck all to be self-satisfied about. Except Militant.
War in Iraq was looming and, consequently, fuel prices were rocketing.
Er....
Oh yeah - Ian Gow was murdered by the IRA. Now we're all mates.
So things do change after all.
Post title brought via XTC and "The Big Express" - can't recall the track, I think it is "Everyday Story of Smalltown".
1) It ain't.
2) 1990 was under their watch.
I say "under their watch" rather than "their fault", even though we all know that 15% (for two minutes in September 1992) interest rates &c &c were all the responsibility of the Conservative Government and Mrs Thatcher, whereas the current problems are global and nothing to do with Labour.
Lest we forget, life was actually *utterly shit* in 1990, whether or not you blame the Tories. The UK was on the verge of another wave of riots, which in fact dissipated into the endless whinging "radicalism" of the 1990s and 2000s but apart from one instance in March 1990 didn't quite fulfil its "potential". The property bubble had well and truly fucked itself, leaving shedloads of people out of work & home, and Nigel Lawson looking like a post-resignation cunt. Inflation went on its merry way towards 10% (which I think it reached in the autumn - in those days I was fascinated by the 26% it had reached in August 1975). The weather was wholly fucked, with one day of my school life being devoted to watching trees having their backs broken by a hurricane while the howls of a nuclear firestorm whirled overheard (or that's how it sounded). In the summer the bastard sun never seemed to set, the fucker just going on and on. England lost on penalties for the first fucking time. Mrs Thatcher was wholly powerless and quite out of touch, unable to set any kind of agenda as first Lawson (89 I think) and then, devastatingly, Howe, turned the knife; in Howe's case, during a televised Parliamentary debate, with Thatch listening not quite impassively from the front bench. All this was achieved without Neil Kinnock needing to draw breath. Even then he was a self-satisfied bastard and even my 13 year old self knew he had fuck all to be self-satisfied about. Except Militant.
War in Iraq was looming and, consequently, fuel prices were rocketing.
Er....
Oh yeah - Ian Gow was murdered by the IRA. Now we're all mates.
So things do change after all.
Post title brought via XTC and "The Big Express" - can't recall the track, I think it is "Everyday Story of Smalltown".
Saturday, 10 May 2008
The Movement of History
I make no excuses for projecting my own thoughts onto the world in this post. I have little else to go on, for am I no real historian nor thinker.
We live in a constantly changing world, or so we are told, and it becomes part of our day to day survival to cope with that change: we need to change our ways of living, speaking and thinking to ensure we are not separated from the community, although the community itself is increasingly vague to us. We know some people, sure, but few of us could honestly say we share the views and assumptions of the people in either our real, physical locality or our internet habitat: however much we leave approving comments on blogs we like there will always be the divergence of views caused by thought, independence and history.
For such a changing world the movement of time seems to be remarkably solid. I mean that very quickly the past, or other ways of living, begin to seem unlikely, even impossible; from tiny things like the changing coin to the vast sand-shifting of ethics. Our experience, though varied, seems to be immersed. It did not take long of governance by New Labour for a Tory government to seem almost unthinkable, and for the long years of Tory dominance of politics to seem less than a memory. In many places, with silent pits, the memories would be strong: I mean culturally, even philosophically: in the years 1999-2004 (roughly) I think, the assumptions, arguments, practicalities of Conservative government were so alien to the commentariat and swathes of the public (including, to be fair, myself) as to be meaningless, irrelevant, unexisting.
I don't know if this is making sense but the point I am making is that I think the changing world, in certain ways, makes us unable to remember. It keeps us mired in the present, and thinking of the future (at the moment), with particular regard to global warming, in a kind of fearful fascination. I would have thought we would remember more sharply things being different because it wasn't that long ago: but this is partly what is driving us to worship youth: it is not just beauty, or sexuality, or ability, but the fact that it is, at any given moment, youth which is best attuned to the state of the world at that point, best able to cope, completely unconcerned by trying to adapt. Youth fits, it works. The rest of us find it harder because we are (to greater or lesser degrees) different from the world we live in.
So the study of modern history assumes a keener aspect, and becomes more popular because it is history, it is the story of real or nearly real people in a world we can see has changed. Other types of history (say, medieval) are about other worlds, and so don't interest us so much. Modern history is about our world. The nazification of the school history syllabus and of the bookshelves is a testament to the fact that we are still trying to understand our cultural origins in that time. We see our society as evolving from that, rather than before - take the notion and enacting of human rights, though it may have its origins in the Enlightenment or French Revolution, the key document of our time is the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I think there is also a powerful part of our culture that still cannot understand how it all happened and why it all happened.
I've written on this idea before of course - that the twentieth century is not quite over, and that, possibly, we are suffering some kind of extended anxiety problems caused by 45 years of living under 4 minutes' notice of destruction (ok it was a bit longer than that until the early sixties). But that isn't entirely what i mean here. I mean a culture (though it is so mixed now as to make even the singular noun questionable) which has come into existence only five minutes ago, furnished with a history that it does not remember, but it does remember being at one point in time and at that nexus emerging into something resembling life. From there it has turned, shifted, slid, slanted and cracked so that we just do not, really, remember what it was like.
I don't mind if you think this is a lot of contradictory, muddled cobblers. It is a kind of live-thinking exercise, no pre thought has gone into this post at all except a vague sense that i'd like to put finger to keyboard. If you like it, great. If you don't, also great.
We live in a constantly changing world, or so we are told, and it becomes part of our day to day survival to cope with that change: we need to change our ways of living, speaking and thinking to ensure we are not separated from the community, although the community itself is increasingly vague to us. We know some people, sure, but few of us could honestly say we share the views and assumptions of the people in either our real, physical locality or our internet habitat: however much we leave approving comments on blogs we like there will always be the divergence of views caused by thought, independence and history.
For such a changing world the movement of time seems to be remarkably solid. I mean that very quickly the past, or other ways of living, begin to seem unlikely, even impossible; from tiny things like the changing coin to the vast sand-shifting of ethics. Our experience, though varied, seems to be immersed. It did not take long of governance by New Labour for a Tory government to seem almost unthinkable, and for the long years of Tory dominance of politics to seem less than a memory. In many places, with silent pits, the memories would be strong: I mean culturally, even philosophically: in the years 1999-2004 (roughly) I think, the assumptions, arguments, practicalities of Conservative government were so alien to the commentariat and swathes of the public (including, to be fair, myself) as to be meaningless, irrelevant, unexisting.
I don't know if this is making sense but the point I am making is that I think the changing world, in certain ways, makes us unable to remember. It keeps us mired in the present, and thinking of the future (at the moment), with particular regard to global warming, in a kind of fearful fascination. I would have thought we would remember more sharply things being different because it wasn't that long ago: but this is partly what is driving us to worship youth: it is not just beauty, or sexuality, or ability, but the fact that it is, at any given moment, youth which is best attuned to the state of the world at that point, best able to cope, completely unconcerned by trying to adapt. Youth fits, it works. The rest of us find it harder because we are (to greater or lesser degrees) different from the world we live in.
So the study of modern history assumes a keener aspect, and becomes more popular because it is history, it is the story of real or nearly real people in a world we can see has changed. Other types of history (say, medieval) are about other worlds, and so don't interest us so much. Modern history is about our world. The nazification of the school history syllabus and of the bookshelves is a testament to the fact that we are still trying to understand our cultural origins in that time. We see our society as evolving from that, rather than before - take the notion and enacting of human rights, though it may have its origins in the Enlightenment or French Revolution, the key document of our time is the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I think there is also a powerful part of our culture that still cannot understand how it all happened and why it all happened.
I've written on this idea before of course - that the twentieth century is not quite over, and that, possibly, we are suffering some kind of extended anxiety problems caused by 45 years of living under 4 minutes' notice of destruction (ok it was a bit longer than that until the early sixties). But that isn't entirely what i mean here. I mean a culture (though it is so mixed now as to make even the singular noun questionable) which has come into existence only five minutes ago, furnished with a history that it does not remember, but it does remember being at one point in time and at that nexus emerging into something resembling life. From there it has turned, shifted, slid, slanted and cracked so that we just do not, really, remember what it was like.
I don't mind if you think this is a lot of contradictory, muddled cobblers. It is a kind of live-thinking exercise, no pre thought has gone into this post at all except a vague sense that i'd like to put finger to keyboard. If you like it, great. If you don't, also great.
Sunday, 4 May 2008
Carving Chunks Out of Your Psyche
I've just realised it.
Why I've always been afraid of doors which open by themselves, blank televisions, corners, darkness and corridors.
1978.
I could hear a drilling, a powerful electric noise, I ran towards it, pushing the door, or was the door already open, towards the television, a long way away, which was closed, and the noise carried on, I screamed and screamed and no-one picked me up or did they and the noise carried on.
It was "Brill the drill", our next door neighbour in Sutton drilling the hell out of the wall.
Or maybe I am wrong and it is not a memory but a projection, and the door is not opened by me but by someone else, and the corner is powerful and another tv-type screen is blank and someone screams but it's not me but I am there, sort of. The television is very, very important. But it is off. The door opens, by its own accord, or by someone, and there it is, there's the picture.
It's not a memory but a warning, or a prediction.
And people wonder why I find the US version of "The Ring" the most frightening film ever.
Someone drilled a hole into my head without ever knowing me.
And the picture?
I don't want to put you off your tea.
Why I've always been afraid of doors which open by themselves, blank televisions, corners, darkness and corridors.
1978.
I could hear a drilling, a powerful electric noise, I ran towards it, pushing the door, or was the door already open, towards the television, a long way away, which was closed, and the noise carried on, I screamed and screamed and no-one picked me up or did they and the noise carried on.
It was "Brill the drill", our next door neighbour in Sutton drilling the hell out of the wall.
Or maybe I am wrong and it is not a memory but a projection, and the door is not opened by me but by someone else, and the corner is powerful and another tv-type screen is blank and someone screams but it's not me but I am there, sort of. The television is very, very important. But it is off. The door opens, by its own accord, or by someone, and there it is, there's the picture.
It's not a memory but a warning, or a prediction.
And people wonder why I find the US version of "The Ring" the most frightening film ever.
Someone drilled a hole into my head without ever knowing me.
And the picture?
I don't want to put you off your tea.
I'm So Macho
Yes it's true, TD is a hunk of human steel. According to my rowing machine, whose readout this morning said "fuck me you're caning this, fucking hell you're as fit as fuck why don't you fuck off onto the fucking cross trainer or summat".
Also I've got muscles the size of Jean Claude van Damme. I mean each muscle is the size of him.
And I ran. I ran so far away, I ran all night and day (c Flock of Seagulls, 1983). Well, ok, 1.64 miles but for a fat old cunt like me that's a pretty good effort. Indeed it's world shaking, or so all the other gym members thought as my flabby arse was pounding the living fuck out of the gym - and get this it is pretty well made, as it was a WWII air base then a training centre then a USAF air base - it was all built to withstand some kind of megatonnage (I'm guessing not direct - more likely to take the flak from Brize Norton, even assuming a prevailing wind and bearing in mind the nearness of Cheltenham and Fairford - we're talking FallOut City here - kind of, I'm told there's still loads of the place underground that still works).
And ghosts, ghosts that wander the underground passages and ancient hospitals, the ghosts of people who never had the chance to die rather than the people who did. These ghosts stalk the designs and the roads, they wander up and down in front of cars and when you play your retro 80s tracks; they fade in and out among the leafless trees and they want you to fall back, to forget the nice new estates here and remember you were going to take all kinds of injuries and that you'd have very, very little time even though you thought you were nowhere.
From the hilltop you can see the Chilterns, and Andoversford, and Malvern. A 15 megaton blast (in a war circa 1965, before they realised that more damage would come from smaller and more conentrated blasts) would be seen here whether it hit Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Oxford, Reading, Cheltenham, Swindon or even London. The fireworks would have been truly astonishing.
You'd have just about had enough time to enjoy it before you died, that is, if your eyeballs hadn't melted.
Oh well.
Also I've got muscles the size of Jean Claude van Damme. I mean each muscle is the size of him.
And I ran. I ran so far away, I ran all night and day (c Flock of Seagulls, 1983). Well, ok, 1.64 miles but for a fat old cunt like me that's a pretty good effort. Indeed it's world shaking, or so all the other gym members thought as my flabby arse was pounding the living fuck out of the gym - and get this it is pretty well made, as it was a WWII air base then a training centre then a USAF air base - it was all built to withstand some kind of megatonnage (I'm guessing not direct - more likely to take the flak from Brize Norton, even assuming a prevailing wind and bearing in mind the nearness of Cheltenham and Fairford - we're talking FallOut City here - kind of, I'm told there's still loads of the place underground that still works).
And ghosts, ghosts that wander the underground passages and ancient hospitals, the ghosts of people who never had the chance to die rather than the people who did. These ghosts stalk the designs and the roads, they wander up and down in front of cars and when you play your retro 80s tracks; they fade in and out among the leafless trees and they want you to fall back, to forget the nice new estates here and remember you were going to take all kinds of injuries and that you'd have very, very little time even though you thought you were nowhere.
From the hilltop you can see the Chilterns, and Andoversford, and Malvern. A 15 megaton blast (in a war circa 1965, before they realised that more damage would come from smaller and more conentrated blasts) would be seen here whether it hit Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Oxford, Reading, Cheltenham, Swindon or even London. The fireworks would have been truly astonishing.
You'd have just about had enough time to enjoy it before you died, that is, if your eyeballs hadn't melted.
Oh well.
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Forty-What?
Many years ago I co-edited a piss-poor school rag called, in breach of every copyright law in the land, "42". It was a lot crapper than I had previously thought, as I realised when I re-read it last night. Still, at least I now know that I am a twat and have always been a twat. There has never been a time when I haven't been a smug old cunt, even if there were times when I had more hair than now, or less pounds around the middle. I have also always looked like a cunt, as I saw on some recent photos. Some of us have been cursed with this affliction: we could be 7, 14, 18, 21, or 31 and we still look like utter fucking twats. That's because we are. I've also always sounded like a cunt, as my few radio appearances prove. And as all of my acquaintances have always said. Let us modify Orwell and Amis's dictum for the fast moving twenty-first century: At twenty-five, everyone has the face he deserves.
Fucking hell, there really is no hope. None at all.
Fucking hell, there really is no hope. None at all.
Saturday, 8 March 2008
It's Always The Same/ It's Just A Shame That's All
Can't remember who did this - Genesis probably, in fact I think it was them.
I drew a picture of it for my dad, so much did I like it in 1982 or 1983 or whenever.
He was, like, not getting out of bed until 12.15 for Grandstand and I was like watching Saturday Superstore or something and listening to this somehow, somewhere, and so I drew this cartoon strip with me listening to this track and trying to get him up or whatever. Don't really recall. Don't suppose it matters. Long time ago. Now I'm a long way grown up and it clearly has no relevance to my life....
Still. It's got a point, though, hasn't it?
I drew a picture of it for my dad, so much did I like it in 1982 or 1983 or whenever.
He was, like, not getting out of bed until 12.15 for Grandstand and I was like watching Saturday Superstore or something and listening to this somehow, somewhere, and so I drew this cartoon strip with me listening to this track and trying to get him up or whatever. Don't really recall. Don't suppose it matters. Long time ago. Now I'm a long way grown up and it clearly has no relevance to my life....
Still. It's got a point, though, hasn't it?
Thursday, 22 February 2007
Managerialism
Let me begin this post with a disclaimer: I am not a philosopher, nor an historian, nor do I have an MBA or any other business qualification. I am a fool who likes to post his thoughts to the internet.
Reading Michael Burleigh's remarkable "The Third Reich: A New History" I noticed that he tries to draw parallels and show continuities, mainly for conservative purposes, throughout the book. One of these concerns the SS. He writes: "If these were legacies of the war and its denoument, a managerialist emphasis upon competition and performance...has an enduringly modern ring to it." (p195) I had thought that managerialism - the idea that processes and outcomes can and must be regulated by targeted effort, among other ideas - was an offshoot of the breathless industrialisation of the USA, rather than the Great War: but I can understand how one could make a case that the War, in which for the first time millions of human lives were just movable columns of statistics, did more to foster the growth of this concept. Burleigh is more concerned with ends justifying the means, the fight being its own meaning, and sheer, furious brutality as being remnants of the war which found their way into a generation's hearts and hence helped to build the SS, than he is with the modern business consequences; but I wondered whether our western obsession with performance, targets, accountability and regulation could be traced in part to yet another thread of the First World War that still affects our lives. I understand that regulation, to some degree, hails from a universalist, napoleonic code in which things must be legalised before they are allowed (unlike our traditional common law system). However, I'm drawn to this idea that we culturally continue to act out an ancient trauma through the rituals of modern capitalist society in which an individual is conceived solely or predominantly as an agent of delivery, rather than something worthwhile in its own respect: it reminds me of the persuasive idea that cultural cataclysms cannot simply be forgotten, however much we like to think they can be. They survive in our dreams and nightmares, among other places. Burleigh also points out, again rather mischeviously, that modern identity politics, in which an individual is respected in so far as they belong to a group, has its own similar antecedents.
Incidentally, today Wimbledon announced that it will henceforth pay equal money for men and women, and rightly so. However, the BBC's Jonathan Overend, in discussing the news, dismissed arguments that they should do equal work for that money as "irrelevant and illogical". I wonder whether he would agree that men should work longer hours than women on building sites, buses, in factories, on the basis that "on average" men are stronger than women: instead he simply argued that female 100m runners are paid the same as men for slower times, which hardly seems to wrap up the argument to me. He concluded his little puff for gender equality with "the feeling here is.." which reminded me of another of Burleigh's phrases: "politics as feeling". I don't mind arguments being refuted, smashed, or destroyed: arguments simply being ignored is something else. Neither the Wimbledon guy, or anyone on the BBC attempted to engage with what seems a very simple idea. Before I get accused of hating women, or anyone else, (hate features prominently in modern political discourse, especially as the motivation of one's opponents) let me reiterate that I think it's a good idea to pay equal money, but there are other issues around it, which are being completely ignored.
Reading Michael Burleigh's remarkable "The Third Reich: A New History" I noticed that he tries to draw parallels and show continuities, mainly for conservative purposes, throughout the book. One of these concerns the SS. He writes: "If these were legacies of the war and its denoument, a managerialist emphasis upon competition and performance...has an enduringly modern ring to it." (p195) I had thought that managerialism - the idea that processes and outcomes can and must be regulated by targeted effort, among other ideas - was an offshoot of the breathless industrialisation of the USA, rather than the Great War: but I can understand how one could make a case that the War, in which for the first time millions of human lives were just movable columns of statistics, did more to foster the growth of this concept. Burleigh is more concerned with ends justifying the means, the fight being its own meaning, and sheer, furious brutality as being remnants of the war which found their way into a generation's hearts and hence helped to build the SS, than he is with the modern business consequences; but I wondered whether our western obsession with performance, targets, accountability and regulation could be traced in part to yet another thread of the First World War that still affects our lives. I understand that regulation, to some degree, hails from a universalist, napoleonic code in which things must be legalised before they are allowed (unlike our traditional common law system). However, I'm drawn to this idea that we culturally continue to act out an ancient trauma through the rituals of modern capitalist society in which an individual is conceived solely or predominantly as an agent of delivery, rather than something worthwhile in its own respect: it reminds me of the persuasive idea that cultural cataclysms cannot simply be forgotten, however much we like to think they can be. They survive in our dreams and nightmares, among other places. Burleigh also points out, again rather mischeviously, that modern identity politics, in which an individual is respected in so far as they belong to a group, has its own similar antecedents.
Incidentally, today Wimbledon announced that it will henceforth pay equal money for men and women, and rightly so. However, the BBC's Jonathan Overend, in discussing the news, dismissed arguments that they should do equal work for that money as "irrelevant and illogical". I wonder whether he would agree that men should work longer hours than women on building sites, buses, in factories, on the basis that "on average" men are stronger than women: instead he simply argued that female 100m runners are paid the same as men for slower times, which hardly seems to wrap up the argument to me. He concluded his little puff for gender equality with "the feeling here is.." which reminded me of another of Burleigh's phrases: "politics as feeling". I don't mind arguments being refuted, smashed, or destroyed: arguments simply being ignored is something else. Neither the Wimbledon guy, or anyone on the BBC attempted to engage with what seems a very simple idea. Before I get accused of hating women, or anyone else, (hate features prominently in modern political discourse, especially as the motivation of one's opponents) let me reiterate that I think it's a good idea to pay equal money, but there are other issues around it, which are being completely ignored.
Sunday, 7 January 2007
R Tape Loading Error, 0:1
via Dizzy I found this website. I think that is all there is, but it made me laugh. In fact it's a myth that you'd load something for 15 minutes on a Spectrum and then it would trump your expectations with this oft-seen message. In the classic Speccy age (ie before Amstrad took over Sinclair) the 48K games generally took less than 10 minutes to load and many only a couple of minutes (less than it takes my pc to wheeze Age of Empires into gear). A brilliant game like Horace Goes Skiing took hardly any time at all and was extremely reliable. Of course it wasn't the games that were the problem, but the cable-connected tape recorder which sometimes had to be propped up, or the cables sellotaped in. It was really later, when the redesigned (and much less sexy) Amstrad Spectrums (or should that be Spectra) had built in tape decks and 128K that games could take the thick end of 20 minutes to load.
The point for me about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum for me was this: it was an idiosyncratic little thing, beautiful in its own way but quite hard to use (a clumsy 8 year old like me was no good with the rubber keys). The error messages like the famous one above were masterpieces of stubborn understatement, often insistently cropping up at the least appropriate moment. You couldn't type rude messages onto it because the keys always printed command words at the beginning of a line, which was a shame but it made writing (or in my case mostly copying out) BASIC programs easier. Even the data systems were idiosyncratic, like the microdrive, which I never had but always wanted: whatever else it may have been it was sexy and fitted the computer's design well. Its graphics were poor compared to the C64 and the Amstrad CPC464, but I always felt a little...underwhelmed using these devices. They lacked a joie de vivre that the Speccy made its own.
At least you got error messages regularly with a Spectrum: my pc just freezes or restarts with no warning at all most of the time and you've no idea what's gone wrong.
The point for me about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum for me was this: it was an idiosyncratic little thing, beautiful in its own way but quite hard to use (a clumsy 8 year old like me was no good with the rubber keys). The error messages like the famous one above were masterpieces of stubborn understatement, often insistently cropping up at the least appropriate moment. You couldn't type rude messages onto it because the keys always printed command words at the beginning of a line, which was a shame but it made writing (or in my case mostly copying out) BASIC programs easier. Even the data systems were idiosyncratic, like the microdrive, which I never had but always wanted: whatever else it may have been it was sexy and fitted the computer's design well. Its graphics were poor compared to the C64 and the Amstrad CPC464, but I always felt a little...underwhelmed using these devices. They lacked a joie de vivre that the Speccy made its own.
At least you got error messages regularly with a Spectrum: my pc just freezes or restarts with no warning at all most of the time and you've no idea what's gone wrong.
Wednesday, 20 December 2006
Holocaust Denier Not Released
David Irving was not recommended for release today. These sources which claim that he was, ie the BBC, are just the mouthpieces of Zionist propaganda. Until I see some solid evidence - namely the bricks of his cell, and eyewitness testimony from people who can be trusted - which clearly does not include his jailors or people who were there as they obviously have axes to grind - I will remain convinced that David Irving is behind bars, where the miserable old git belongs. As for this ghastly "holocaust denier" industry that has grown up around him, it's all a load of fetid dingo's kidneys. David Irving is in jail, has always been in jail, and will always be in jail. Indeed, I've written a little poem about it:
David Irving is a jailbird
In fact he is a smelly old turd
We'd like to see him in the shit
But he already lives in it.
David Irving is a jailbird
In fact he is a smelly old turd
We'd like to see him in the shit
But he already lives in it.
Saturday, 9 December 2006
Peter Hitchens Stimulates Debate, Abuse
Pootling around the non-socialist blogosphere this morning, I noticed that Peter Hitchens has posted something which has led to thoughtful debate as well as mindless abuse. It is the subject of Intelligent Design teaching in schools. I have a simple view on this: it might well be worth teaching in philosophy, RE or even PSHE: but as a science topic it is completely out of place. It is interesting to note that some people, despite apparently having masses of evidence to back up their views choose not to cite it.
One of the commentors makes this point:
... the atrocities of the Nazis and Communists were carried out in the name of political beliefs of fascism and communism, not atheism-- I'm sure that all communists or fascists aren't atheists.
I tend to think it goes with the terrority for communists: the position of fascists is more equivocal. Having just finished Richard J Evans's The Third Reich in Power, I find it difficult to believe that the Nazis as a whole possessed a genuine faith in a supernatural being, since they invested so much of that power and authority in themselves. Some Nazis of course were keen on the occult and paganism, but it was mainly to demonstrate the ancient beauty and strength of the German people. Himmler's views on religion, like on everything else, were completely barking: but it's hardly a way of saying that fascism was religious. Hitler himself sometimes talked of God, and I think the Supreme Deity is mentioned in the SS oath; for Hitler it was a sort of mythic sense in which he saw himself joining the Germanic gods in Valhalla at the end of time, or maybe he only meant it in a metaphorical sense. Nevertheless the role of religious belief is more ambiguous in Nazi Germany than in Soviet Russia. Not to mention the ancient role of Christianity in preparing the ground for the holocaust.
The poster is right in his comment that the atrocities of communism and so on were carried out in the name of politics. There were of course, atrocities carried out specifically against religious belief by atheists, because of atheism, especially in the USSR and Maoist China. Following on from Norm on atheism, it is also clearly rubbish that Stalin's atrocities were religiously inspired or came from his time in the seminary rather than his years of street fighting and conspiring, not to mention his wide Marxist reading. What the USSR and China and, I think, Nazi Germany, show, is that atheism, despite the claims of Richard Dawkins, is totally compatible with mass murder and utter disrespect for life. His position is that belief in an afterlife is more likely to make you lose respect for this one, while the history of the Twentieth Century shows that the reverse certainly applies: knowing that life is pointless means it is fine to waste it. Atheism is certainly making it easier for our leading bioethicists and medics to argue for disabled babies to be killed, for wider abortion provision, and for more euthanasia. Since life itself has no inherent property of meaning, there is no reason to make heroic efforts to save it; the pointless existence of suffering is what must be destroyed. I'm not saying this view is wholly uncompassionate, just that it demonstrates how when human life appears unable to create its own meaning, the lack of inherent meaning means that it can be more easily ended. Yet we hold fast to the abolition of the death penalty- probably because, again, it causes suffering; and it's suffering that we are not prepared to endure. For mainly compassionate reasons, I'm sure.
One of the commentors makes this point:
... the atrocities of the Nazis and Communists were carried out in the name of political beliefs of fascism and communism, not atheism-- I'm sure that all communists or fascists aren't atheists.
I tend to think it goes with the terrority for communists: the position of fascists is more equivocal. Having just finished Richard J Evans's The Third Reich in Power, I find it difficult to believe that the Nazis as a whole possessed a genuine faith in a supernatural being, since they invested so much of that power and authority in themselves. Some Nazis of course were keen on the occult and paganism, but it was mainly to demonstrate the ancient beauty and strength of the German people. Himmler's views on religion, like on everything else, were completely barking: but it's hardly a way of saying that fascism was religious. Hitler himself sometimes talked of God, and I think the Supreme Deity is mentioned in the SS oath; for Hitler it was a sort of mythic sense in which he saw himself joining the Germanic gods in Valhalla at the end of time, or maybe he only meant it in a metaphorical sense. Nevertheless the role of religious belief is more ambiguous in Nazi Germany than in Soviet Russia. Not to mention the ancient role of Christianity in preparing the ground for the holocaust.
The poster is right in his comment that the atrocities of communism and so on were carried out in the name of politics. There were of course, atrocities carried out specifically against religious belief by atheists, because of atheism, especially in the USSR and Maoist China. Following on from Norm on atheism, it is also clearly rubbish that Stalin's atrocities were religiously inspired or came from his time in the seminary rather than his years of street fighting and conspiring, not to mention his wide Marxist reading. What the USSR and China and, I think, Nazi Germany, show, is that atheism, despite the claims of Richard Dawkins, is totally compatible with mass murder and utter disrespect for life. His position is that belief in an afterlife is more likely to make you lose respect for this one, while the history of the Twentieth Century shows that the reverse certainly applies: knowing that life is pointless means it is fine to waste it. Atheism is certainly making it easier for our leading bioethicists and medics to argue for disabled babies to be killed, for wider abortion provision, and for more euthanasia. Since life itself has no inherent property of meaning, there is no reason to make heroic efforts to save it; the pointless existence of suffering is what must be destroyed. I'm not saying this view is wholly uncompassionate, just that it demonstrates how when human life appears unable to create its own meaning, the lack of inherent meaning means that it can be more easily ended. Yet we hold fast to the abolition of the death penalty- probably because, again, it causes suffering; and it's suffering that we are not prepared to endure. For mainly compassionate reasons, I'm sure.
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