notes from a small bedroom » Politics

As it was in the beginning…

Pete — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:06:03 +0000

I’ve been looking back to the beginning of the Blair regime – that time of misplaced hope, ‘glad, confident morning’, etc. – and was struck by a number of things in the New Labour manifesto. This in particular now strikes a rather chilling note:

“New Labour is the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole.”

I mean WTF? Isn’t that the kind of thing totalitarian regimes say about themselves? At least we can’t pretend we weren’t told.

Then there’s already an indication of a desire to play fast and loose with the legal system:

“…fast-track punishment for persistent young offenders by halving the time from arrest to sentencing”

Note the missing stage of trial and actually needing to be found guilty. As ever it’s hard to believe so many of them are trained lawyers.

Some stuff, though is almost comic in the mismatch between what they said and what they actually did:

“…In health policy, we will safeguard the basic principles of the NHS, which we founded, but will not return to the top-down management of the 1970s. So we will keep the planning and provision of healthcare separate, but put planning on a longer-term, decentralised and more co-operative basis. The key is to root out unnecessary administrative cost, and to spend money on the right things – frontline care…”

and

“…Over-centralisation of government and lack of accountability was a problem in governments of both left and right. Labour is committed to the democratic renewal of our country through decentralisation and the elimination of excessive government secrecy…”

But best of all is the list of 10 pledges, of which this is number nine:

“We will clean up politics, decentralise political power throughout the United Kingdom and put the funding of political parties on a proper and accountable basis.”

Yeah, right. Maybe it was a typo and they meant ‘We will clean up in politics”.

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.
Edmund Burke

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Be the Briton

Pete — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:52:29 +0000

As the Government talks once again of defining (for its own purposes) that elusive concept, over at the Ministry of Truth, Unity is pondering the nature of Britishness

To become British, one simply needs to find one’s sense of Britishness within oneself and not conform to the values and expectations of others, a solution that is, in all respects, consistent with the traditions of liberal individualism that the present government are seeking to do away with.

Yes, my apprentice. It is not enough to merely study Britishness. To become British one must find the inner Briton. Britain as neither a monarchy nor a democracy, but rather a state of mind. I suspect you could apply similar reasoning to any nationality, really, but it does seem particularly apposite in the case of this country.

It’s hard to reduce ideas of identity to a simple list of attributes, something that is more associated with nationalistic dictatorships than anything I’d recognise as a liberal democracy. Indeed I wonder if that is the attraction – government extending its role even over our very concept of ourselves.

On the other hand, apparently there are always two things about any subject. So for me what are the two things about Britishness? What sums up that ‘liberal individualism’ that Unity correctly identifies as the core feature of being a Briton?

Mind your own fucking business.
I said, mind your own fucking business.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

One of the most important signs of the existence of a democracy is that when there is a knock at the door at 5 in the morning, one is completely certain that it is the milkman.
Winston Churchill

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The cult of death

Pete — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 21:35:06 +0000

I am probably going to be categorised as a ‘climate change denier’ – a phrase redolent of religious fanaticism – so let’s get that out of the way to start with. Climate change is real – indeed changeability is surely one of the defining characteristics of the climate. It’s almost as warm now as it was a thousand years ago, and three hundred years ago it was much colder. The question has never been whether the climate is changing, but rather to what extent, if any, human agency has an effect on the direction and magnitude of the change. Here, I am somewhat sceptical. Humans have always overestimated their importance and failed to grasp just how mind-bogglingly big the earth is. I’m fairly sure that the anthropogenic element in any warming is relatively minor, and that the vast majority of it is caused by natural factors outwith (if you will forgive the Scotticism) human control.

What does interest me though, is the unabated enthusiasm a significant proportion of the human race seems to have for doomsday scenarios. Why do they find the prospect of death on an inconceivable scale so appealing? What is the attraction in seeing yourself as part of the last generation of the human race? Or is it (in their imaginations) only others that do the dying, while they emerge from the disaster either translated to a higher plane, or as the inheritors of a new (and somewhat emptier) planet? We have, of course, as a species been here many times before. The difference being that in the past it was difficult to reach substantial numbers of willing believers with your message of doom. In the past half century this has become increasingly easy. I suspect that this alone is sufficient to explain the growth from the 1960s onwards of groups predicting (always, for nothing really changes, wrongly) imminent catastrophe, whether from overpopulation, resource depletion, pollution, or – as now – climate change. While the imputed cause may change, the message is always the same: mankind is sinful and must be punished. Only the sins have changed to match our secular age from religious malfeasance to crimes against nature.

Yet as protestors gather for a rally under the banner of ‘Stop climate chaos‘, I want to issue a, probably forlorn, plea to them to look inside their minds and ask themselves why they are so filled with enthusiasm, why their faces glow with the light of fanaticism at the thought, or rather the conviction, that humanity faces a catastrophe.

It seems that for many, this end is not to be feared, but rather embraced – they simply cannot wait for the promised catastrophe and the billions of deaths that will ensue. Mere change is not enough – it must be the end of the world.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.
Edmund Burke

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Burning issues

Pete — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 23:48:28 +0000

Once again we see that there is no idea for a new law so stupid that you can’t get a policeman to speak up for it. So, burning a flag should be a criminal offence, should it? Not for any reason it would seem other than the usual politician’s reason – passing a new law is a substitute for enforcing the laws we already have. I’m surprised to see the police going down the same political route. Actually, no, hang on. I’m not surprised to see the police taking the same easy option as New Labour have been taking for nearly a decade (and, to be honest, the Tories before them), since under the present government the police have become totally politicised.

The useless prick who drew up these and other proposals is quoted as saying:

“There appears to be a growing public perception that policing of demonstrations is unduly lenient.”

Perhaps he should have considered that the reason for this is that his force has singularly failed to enforce existing laws against some demonstrations (the defining characteristic of the leniently policed demonstrations will be left as an exercise for the reader). Resulting not, as any fule kno, from a lack of laws, but rather from a lack of will on the part of the Met hierarchy to do their duty and enforce the law impartially.

Meanwhile, Lord Goldsmith is ‘preparing a package of announcements’. That sort of thing always makes me shudder these days. What new repressive abomination are they dreaming up? Which further part of our liberty will be chipped away? Apparently ‘Everything is on the table’ so that ‘We are hoping to announce a national strategy for dealing with these people in November.’

Is it just me, or is there something chilling in the phrase ‘these people’? Still, there’s always a New Labour rent-a-mouth MP ready to do his arse-licking duty (some people really have both no brains and no shame). Step forward Shahid Malik – maybe there’s a promotion in it for you.

For fuck’s sake – why not go the whole hog and and just ban dissent altogether? Oh hang on – they already did.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.
Edmund Burke

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Crying Wolfgang

Pete — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:39:12 +0000

I know it’s always tempting to find conspiracy and outrage in everything that the Labour Party does, but surely the fact that a non-delegate, non-member of the NEC (as yet) only has a visitor pass to the conference is really a non-story?

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.
EdmundBurke

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But don’t hold your breath

Pete — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 21:39:57 +0000

Another big Labour lender arrested. Disappointingly, it turns out to be a different Chris Evans. I still think that it will be hard to prove anything, despite whatever compelling inferences might be drawn from the order of events, unless someone turns Queen’s evidence. It certainly stinks, and is part of the reason Labour has haemorraged members in recent years. I’m sure it fills most of the remaining membership with shame – but I don’t expect them to anything about it. Why change the habits of a lifetime?

Meanwhile I noticed this contribution on the (hardly busy) Party Funding Review forum:

If political parties are to be beholden to the people then it would make sense for the people to provide funding via the state.

…which is dumb on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start. But since political parties aren’t “beholden to the people”, I guess we can dismiss the rest. Even if they were, it’s hard to see how the conclusion follows. You could equally well say “If political parties are to be beholden to the people then it would make sense for the people to provide funding via individual contributions”. Hang on, isn’t that what we do now?

The altnerative is for wealthy men representing powerful interests to provide the funding for the parties who will therefore be, just ever so slightly, beholden to the powerful interests and therefore not the people.

…or for the parties to rely on individual contributions from a mass membership base. But to build that, they’d have to convince us that they have at least a slight intention of paying attention to what we want. Note the false dichotomy – the only alternatives are state funding or funding by the rich. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. There are other options.

State funding should tighten a link between the people and the parties and loosen the smiling bear hug of corporate interests.

Just like it has in those countries that have state funding for parties. Oh, errr, never mind. Lord, since the bastards can’t persuade us to pay for their dubious services, they want instead to force us to pay. What planet are they on?

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.
Edmund Burke

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Doggerel Dave elsewhere

Pete — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:52:00 +0000

My alter ego, Doggerel Dave, has been active in the comments to Rachel’s rhythmic, rhyming rant. I can’t help myself – I just find it too easy and tempting, and my brain just works that way. Come and have a go yourself – let’s face it, there’s plenty of source material.

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
Edmund Burke

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I’ve got a little list

Pete — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:46:19 +0000

Well, a little late, I know, but it still surprises me that I appeared as no.78 in the top 100 non-aligned blogs in Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging. Not that I expected to be higher, you understand – I was surprised to be there at all. I mean, just one place behind Europhobia.

…or more accurately, I am a blogger on a list.

Quite what the point of it all is, I’m not sure. It was somewhat surprising to see there are 100 non-aligned blogs. There’s been a certain amount of hand-wringing and moaning (see the comments) about all this, as well as more reasoned comment, but Iain did make it clear it was a personal list, not an objective one, even if he did use a number of criteria to order his lists. It was just a bit of fun*.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Edmund Burke

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It’s just ancient history

Pete — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 21:24:29 +0000

Note: this began life as a comment, but it just grew too long.

I realise that this was something of a rant, but really it is so full of inaccuracies and non-sequiturs I can’t let it pass.

3,500 years ago, the strength of the Hittites (the people of Hatti, now Turkey, roughly… well, Anatolia) lay in their possession of iron-ore and trees. The Ancient Egyptians lacked both, the primary cause of their eventual decline, but they had gold, and the Hittites wanted it.

Prodicus is mistaken that Egypt lacked trees. It did not. Particularly since at the time of the wars with the Hittites, Egypt controlled what is now Israel and Lebanon. It is true that the Hittites do seem to have been early adopters of iron-working, but so what? They engaged in trade with the Egyptians (Egypt having access to abundant gold supplies from Nubia and the eastern desert).

Hatti and Egypt, like almost the entire ancient Middle East, worshipped analogues of the powerful deity Seth, also known as Teshub and Baal, the god of – among other things – war and chaos. The Egyptians honoured him fearfully, placating him so that war could be avoided as far as possible. The Hittites thought he wanted his followers to honour him by making war, so they did, constantly.

The Egyptians may have identified Seth with Teshub, but the two are not connected in origin and there are significant differences – Seth, for example, is not symbolised by a bull; he isn’t depicted as a man with a beard; and he isn’t the father of the sun god. Teshub didn’t kill his brother; didn’t have his balls ripped off; and he isn’t the embodiment of evil. The characterisation of the Egyptians as ‘placating [Seth] so that war could be avoided as far as possible’ is just … wrong. For goodness sake, the conflicts, such as they were, between Egypt and the Hittite empire took place in Israel / Lebanon / Syria – that is in areas subjugated by the Egyptians or the Hittites. How did the Egyptians acquired their empire? It is after all notable that one of the commonest depictions of an Egyptian king shows him smashing in the head of a (bound) foreign prisoner. The Egyptians were by no means averse to war and conquest. It is also not accurate to characterise the Hittites as ‘making war constantly’.

They broke treaty after treaty with the Egyptians. Treaties were for cissies, and against Seth’s will. (Remind you of anything?) After centuries of fighting, the Hittites after Egypt’s (Nubian) gold and the Egyptians because the bloody Hittites wouldn’t go away, the two reached an uneasy stand-off.

I don’t understand where he got the idea that the Hittites ‘broke treaty after treaty with the Egyptians’? As far as I am aware there exists only one treaty from that time which records the end of a war in the time of Ramses II (we have both the Egyptian and the Hittite copy). But while there was fighting over the course of a couple of centuries, that is not the same as ‘centuries of fighting’. And the Hittites did ‘go away’ as their empire disintegrated into civil war and split apart.

That ended with the subjugation of both by the vast, murderous hordes of the ‘religion of peace’ who terrified them into, er, submission, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Finally, it is just plain wrong to say that this conflict ‘ended with the subjugation of both of them by the vast, murderous hordes of the “religion of peace”‘, unless he is talking about the Assyrians, which I’m fairly certain he isn’t. The Hittites had disappeared from history more than 1500 years before the Arab invasion.

He is smiliarly mistaken in what he says here. ‘Turkey’ has not ‘been a threat to its neighbours for 3,500 years – at least no more than any ancient state was a threat to adjoining states. After all, ‘Turkey’, of course, didn’t exist for 3,000 of those 3,500 years. You simply can’t conflate the Hittites (a mere two centuries of expansion then collapse and extinction) – who were Indo-European speakers, with the Arabs and the Turks. Three different peoples, I’m afraid. Perhaps he believes in some form of geographical determinism? I want to know where the Lydians, Phrygians, Luwians, Hurrians, and, yes, Greeks fit into this thesis.

He is also mistaken in the assumption that classical learning only passed to the west from Byzantium, seeming to have completely forgotten Spain, but also to underestimate the Ottoman Empire in its glory days (you know, when we were burning witches and heretics).

This is not to say that modern Turkey should be waved on into the EU – it shouldn’t. It’s just that it’s nonsense to adduce evidence from ancient history to back up a case, and even worse when that evidence is utterly wrong.

“The corrupt influence of the crown, by having all places in its disposal, hath so effectually swallowed up the power, and eaten out the virtue of the house of commons.”
Tom Paine Common Sense

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…the second time as farce

Pete — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 22:02:55 +0000

There’s been quite a lot of talk comparing these last days of Blair’s premiership with the end of Thatcher’s reign in Downing Street. Blair of course in many ways modelled himself on Thatcher, and adopted much of her legacy in defiance of the party he led. And indeed there are striking parallels – the long-serving party leader, winner of three successive elections now looking but now looking increasingly like an electoral liability; the scheming colleagues manoeuvering for advantage under whatever new dispensation succeeds to the post; the back-stabbing briefings; the resignations; the assassin-in-chief and would-be successor who fails at the last; and the seemingly delusional attitude of those in the bunker [insert Berlin 1945 metaphor of choice here].

But yet, but yet, the difference decade and a half makes. While the fall of Thatcher still looks in retrospect like a tragedy (in the theatrical sense), with its combination of hubris and conspiracy, the end of Blair is being played out in a petulant atmosphere more reminiscent of the school playground (“I was going to sack him anyway, so there!”). It’s hard to imagine Thatcher planning a farewell tour including appearances on Blue Peter and Songs of Praise (perhaps an appearance on the JY prog on Radio Two, though). Thatcher at least recognized (eventually) that the end had come and that she had to go – Blair just looks like someone desperate to cling on to position (if not power) as long as he possibly can, to squeeze every last drop of personal – and financial – advantage from his post. He seems the opposite of dignified. The Old Pretender, meanwhile, looks increasingly like he’s just chicken (perhaps remembering Hezza’s fate). It’s all very well to play a long game, but as Keynes noted, “in the long run, we’re all dead.”

But who knows, maybe Yates of the Yard will give us a new meaning for the phrase ‘conviction politician’.

“You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”
Cromwell, dismissing the Rump Parliament in 1653.

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