Prithee go and nominate me for as the Best Teen Weblog in the 2007 Bloggies. It’s just below the gay and lesbian nomination form. You know it’s the right thing to do.
“If you vote for my friend, he will make sure you and your family have many good years, but if you do not, you will be sorry…if you do not vote for him, he will take power.” Borat on democracy.
I love the French sometimes, and at the moment I particularly love the Front d’Opposition à la Nouvelle Année.
“[The] demonstrators in the western city of Nantes waved banners reading: ‘No to 2007′ and ‘Now is better!’ The marchers called on governments and the UN to stop time’s “mad race” and declare a moratorium on the future.”
Precisely my feelings on the matter.
Well, here we are - Santa appears to have made his delivery a bit early, as there’s shiteloads of stuff around the tree already, the brandy and single iced mince pie is placed on the table, I’m sitting at my desk feeling quite relieved that we didn’t go to Prague as we’d planned to do about now, and the snow is conspicuously failing to fall anywhere. Aaahhh. Nice.
Well, some good food and new books tomorrow, presumably. Goody goody. Merry Christmas to y’all, people.
The BBC reports that the world’s most beloved Bashi, President for Life of Turkmenistan, conqueror of beards and those with small feet, and champion of the muskmelon, has died of a heart attack aged 66.
We need not despair entirely, for least his successor, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has what is self-evidently a wonderful name. Nonetheless, this is indeed a black day for both Central Asia and the world generally. It is not impossible that most of the Turkmen population may actually be rather relieved about the whole thing, but he held one great advantage for them - many poor countries are just ruled by bastards, but they were ruled by a mad bastard. The man was a veritable natural spring of anecdotes, yet it is impossible to say which of them was my favourite. Therefore, I will not try. Furthermore, I shall omit the tortuous and repetitive eulogies that will no doubt be churned out from all quarters; instead, I shall merely quote from Wikipedia’s section on the Presidential Decrees he issued while in office. They constitute all that is required, by way of tribute, to demonstrate that this man was one the great heads of state of our era:
In April, 2001, banning ballet and opera, describing them as “Not a part of Turkmen culture”. In 2004, forbidding young men to wear long hair or beards. In March 2004, dismissing 15,000 public health workers in wide-ranging cuts that particularly targeted nurses, midwives, school health visitors and orderlies. In April 2004, urging young people not to get gold tooth caps or gold teeth, suggesting instead that they chew on bones to preserve their teeth. In April 2004, ordering the construction of an ice palace near the capital in spite of Turkmenistan’s climate and more pressing social needs. In 2004, insisting that all licensed drivers pass a morality test. In 2004, banning news readers from wearing make-up as Niyazov had difficulty telling male and female readers apart. In February 2005, ordering the closure of all hospitals outside Ashgabat, saying that if people were ill, they could come to the capital; also ordering the closure of all rural libraries of Turkmenistan, saying that ordinary Turkmen do not read books anyway. In November 2005, ordering that physicians swear an oath to him instead of the Hippocratic Oath. In December 2005, banning video games, stating that they were too violent for young Turkmen to play. In January 2006, Russian media reported that he had ordered to stop paying pensions to 1/3 (more than 100,000) of the country’s elderly people, cutting pensions to another 200,000, and ordering to pay the pensions received in the past two years back to the State. This has supposedly resulted in a huge number of deaths of old people, who may have had their pension (ranging from US$10 to US$90) as the only source of money. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan strongly denied these allegations, accusing the media outlets of spreading “deliberately perverted” information on the issue. In September 2006, the Daily Telegraph reported that Türkmenbashi had issued a new pay scale for Turkmen teachers, which was to come into effect in October of that year. Until then, teachers who wished to avoid being put on the lowest grade of pay or even sacked, would have to write a newspaper article praising Türkmenbashi and have it published in one of the two newspapers of the country. In October 2006 Turkmenistan claimed to have set free 10,056 prisoners, including 253 foreign nationals from 11 countries on Night of Omnipotence. Niyazov said: “Let this humane act on the part of the state serve strengthening truly moral values of the Turkmen society. Let the entire world know that there has never been a place for evil and violence on the blessed Turkmen soil”. The Taipei Times reports that the Turkmen leader changed the Turkmen word for bread, and name of the month of April, to that of his late mother.
Rest in peace, Great Bashi. Now, readers, buy the Rukhnama for someone you love.
I’m aware that I haven’t written anything worth reading here in a long time. Sorry. I break my silence for one purpose only - to report to you a strange optical illusion that I witnessed this morning. I was, as per usual, watching BBC1’s pisspoor but somehow necessary Football Focus. They cut to a scene of several people sitting around a table in a restaurant, talking about football. I was aware that both Peter Shilton and Martin Keown were there. Gnarled old footballers spewing cliches, thought I - nothing new there.
Then they cut to a different angle, and revealed someone else. My thoughts were as follows: “What in the name of Beelzebub’s large intestine is Richard Dawkins doing on football focus?” Indeed, I found myself asking the question out loud, so perplexed was I.
Back came there an answer: “That is Gerry Francis.”
And that, readers, was me told. It’s only when he’s seen from a certain angle of the head, you understand, but it was a startling experience nonetheless.
I have been, admittedly, absent from my post here of late, for which the main thanks can go to the late Stella Gibbons for writing Cold Comfort Farm back in the 1930s and thus allowing the OCR exam board to offer it as an A2 English Literature coursework option, which has meant that I’ve had to write about it at considerable length. Happily, this task is now accomplished and it’ll be handed in on Monday.
Is that it, an end to my barriers to blogging, I hear anyone who actually still reads this blog cry? No, it isn’t. Over the next two weeks I have a brace of admissions interviews to get myself onto the greasy pole and thus out of Cornwall. Accordingly, I remain preoccupied, so things will continue to be quite quiet around here. There was some stuff I meant to give a serious fisking to regarding the Litvinenko thing, but by the time I’m back here that’ll probably have quietened down…
Anyhow, looking to this coming week and the one following it, w15h m3h luXx0rz.
(PS: In case you missed it, Nosemonkey moved house recently. It seemeth pretty good, although I think the astonishingly cluttered atmosphere of the old blog will be missed.)
One obvious question has been missing from the coverage of Aleksandr Litvinenko’s poisoning: who benefited from his hypothetical (and, as it may turn out, actual*) death? Certainly, on first inspection the answer’s obvious: the Kremlin. Litvinenko’s a former FSB podpolkovnik turned critic of Vladimir Putin; it therefore follows that there can only be one person who might have wanted to bump him off. However, there was something weird about this from the beginning. He was described as a “prominent dissident” by the BBC and others repeatedly, yet I had never heard of the guy - and I’m quite well informed about the ins and outs of the Russian intelligence/military community. There were almost instant parrallels drawn with the Viktor Yushchenko thingy - but the key point was missed: both were really crappy assassination attempts. The Russian intelligence services have a vast and state-of-the-art ways of killing people, should they wish, at their disposal. Why use something like Thallium poisoning, giving your victim time to talk? These questions, and others, were kicking around my head, along with a natural scepticism - I am, as anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, far from buying into the whole Putin-tyrannical-bastard agenda. Then there was yesterday; an anti-Syrian member of the Lebanese government was assassinated in Beirut. Syria, apparently, was instantly blamed. Again, why? What did they gain?
(*Edit, 11:19, 23rd November: He’s dead.)
I’m not an instinctive libertarian; I occasionally find myself at odds with those who are. I don’t think that people should have the right to buy and maintain assault weapons in the UK. I don’t think that people should be allowed to drive whacking great 4×4s around central London and not have to pay extra for the privilege. It’s true that as time goes by, I start thinking more and more about certain contradictions in what I believe politically, but by and large it isn’t a huge problem. I am generally able to split political and civil freedoms, for which I am an enthusiast, apart from economic freedoms, for which I have next to no enthusiasm. I wouldn’t imagine that in Blair’s Britain, this is a particularly rare position for leftwingers like myself to adopt.
There’s one issue, though, on which I am more libertarian than half the British blogosphere and the late Milton Friedman put together. That’s the consumption of junk food, in school or otherwise, by Da Yoof. Me and my chums, in other words. The latest development in the campaign to force Britain’s young into eating disgustingly bland ‘healthy alternatives’ is Ofcom’s recommendation to ban all junk food advertising prior to the 9 o’clock watershed. Apparently, not all programming before 9 o’clock will be affected - just stuff like Friends and The Simpsons, which are overwhelmingly watched by young people. Therefore, if young people see unhealthy stuff during the ad breaks, they will instantly go out and eat those things. QED.
Sorry. Hang on a minute.
Let’s take the example of The Simpsons. Homer Simpson is an extremely bad role model as a parent. He lets Bart play with his power tools, arrives home regularly drunk, is about as responsible while at work as Vladimir Romanov, and so on. The viewing audience love Homer nonetheless. Do all the adults who watch and love him immediately transform into him; will all the children and youth who watch him grow up to be versions of him? Of course they bloody won’t. This assumption of ’seeing something entertaining/pleasing on television = immediate personal goal of obtaining or emulating it’ is completely spurious, intellectually lazy, and has been left unchallenged for far too long. Since when has it been so overwhelmingly obvious that a clear link exists all the time?
In any case, there is the tiny little issue of personal choice here. There was a reason that those schoolkids he cooked for didn’t really take to Jamie Oliver - he was denying them the right to eat what they wanted. I supported wholeheartedly the efforts of the parents in Rotherham running fish and chips orders into their kids’ secondary school, because the school refused to serve that stuff themselves. It is completely wrong to force a particular diet or particular eating habits on someone. My typical lunch of a day is something pretending to be a Cornish pasty from the nearest Spar outlet. Do they taste nice? No, not usually. Are they good for me? Almost certainly not. These being true, why the hell do I eat them? Because they’re quick, easy, and fill me up in time for the afternoon. That good enough for you? No?
Too bad, sorry. It’s my life and my diet. I have free will, I have agency, and therefore I will eat whatever the hell I like for my lunch, so long as I can afford it.
There are areas of life which should not be legislated on. This we can all agree on at varying levels. Occasionally this is because the resulting legislation would, by the very nature of its subject, be completely incomprehensible. Other times, the matter at stake is quite simply too trivial to be the business of government - de minimis non curat lex. Yes, there is an argument about the rebounding effect of this generation’s dietary habits on the provision of services when they are older, and it deserves some consideration. Reasonably, though, you’re probably going to decide that the percentage of any given generation that will have such an effect on the public services is too small to be taken into consideration; so it almost certainly will be. So let us choose our meals without hinderance.
If you don’t, we’ll come and throw bricks through your window. Then smash your car up. Because we teenies and kiddywinkles love our ASBOs almost as much as our burgers.
The Guardian’s leading (and sole) quality science writer*, Ben Goldacre, is held in great esteem by those who read his column. This is because he spends a good deal of his time, outside the medical profession, on a tireless crusade against quacks trying to flog you ‘very alkali’ dietary supplements, educational consultants claiming that drinking a glass of water boosts student performance, and indeed just plain ol’ Gillian McKeith. In so doing, he occasionally needs to obtain documents from local or national government. While attempting this recently, he noticed a serious problem (one of many) with an infamous piece of New Labour legislation. Quoth:
“I don’t know if you’ve ever tried using the Freedom of Information Act: it’s an excellent trouble making tool, and you do feel quite James Bond, but the act has its flaws. One being that if you ask for too much, as one lone, obsessive, disproportionately pedantic science columnist, they turn you down on grounds of cost. Quite spuriously and unfairly, to my mind.”
Indeed. Having approached Durham County Council to obtain some research findings pertaining to the effect on students of fish-oil capsules (it’s explained in the column), he found that:
“Durham refused to give me anything. The refusal took them the full statutory four weeks (nice!). And why are they turning me down? ‘It is estimated that it would take 30 hours to fully respond to this second request, which would cost £750 when calculated using the statutory rate of £25 per hour.’ This is a joke: all I asked for, essentially, was the basic information you’d find in any write up of any scientific experiment.”
It is, as he says, a joke that makes a mockery of the whole freedom of information concept - it doesn’t just affect the average citizen who cannot afford to find out things that are hidden from them, but also journalists, who will likely be told by their editors that they cannot have the money they need to persue any given story via the FoI Act.
What he wants us to do, therefore, is to make small, individual applications for parts of the information he needs rather than the whole shebang; the latter option, of course, is what allows Durham County Council to hide the (almost certainly embarrassing at some level) findings of the research behind the excuse of it costing too much. This being done, the information you have should be sent on to him, and it will be thus collated. The good doctor explains how to make such an application here; go do it, if you have the time, inclination, and dislike of people who abuse scientific methods to increase their own prestige and profits.
(The whole thing, of course, is an object lesson in not only the abject, half-hearted, dishonest crapness of the Freedom of Information Act, but in why governments should always try and pass such scrutiny-enabling legislation immediately they come to power - that is, before they have a chance to think about it. For when that happens, as it almost invariably does, their little minds wander off to thinking “how can I subvert this to turn it to our advantage while still seeming honest and open-government minded; how can I be really really clever here?” That way lies calamity. Alternatively, if (once in a while) they could bear in mind that legislation like this stops them from doing stupid things later on because, by that point, they think they can do with impunity, politics would be a much cleaner business, the public would trust politicians more, and ministers’ lives would be so much easier. Really.)
*Or, in his own words, “a serious fuck-off academic ninja“. If you prefer.
