Boris in bicycle fall
Boris fell off his bicycle on his way to the House of Commons yesterday afternoon and was taken to hospital to have his injured arm checked out.
His bicycle is in a bad state of repair but Boris himself is much better now and surprised at all the attention this minor injury is receiving. “Lord help us all!” he said, upon news that his fall had made it to national radio news this morning.
213 Comments
On a technical point, are we bloggers?
Raincoaster has her own blog, so she can be described as a blogger.
But, as I see it, this is Boris’ blog, and us lot are simply posting up comments – Raincoaster included.
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Psimon, 13th Century was before my time (how old do you think I am?) so I am fine with describing the Normans as French at the moment, although I have used pithier words from time to time. Nobody who produces anything as fine as Calvados can be all bad.
Melissa, you say:
But the fact is, if it weren’t for your leveling influence, I’m sure we’d do nothing BUT compete. You have a gift for cheerleading without obnoxious perkiness and calming potential storms. And I have no vested interest in saying that because you’re already sending me the free stuff!
Of course, I could be angling for the whole set. We bloggers is a sneaky bunch.
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And idlex, I’d say we’re all bloggers. There are community blogs, and by allowing so many comments Boris has let this evolve from one person’s braindump to a community blog. I’d venture to say I’ve got a higher word count on the last two posts than Boris does, and it’s not JUST because I’m a windbag. I’m not alone, either. These threads are threads, like a forum but with a starting point at the top of the page. If I had to use a metaphor (blog stat counter held at gunpoint or something, “go on, use a metaphorical conceit or the HTML get it!”) I’d have to say it’s like a large party, with an assortment of guests, some louder, some good listeners, only Boris says the most interesting thing just as we arrive and then passes out really early. From what I hear, that doesn’t exactly parallel what happens in RL.
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a large party, with an assortment of guests, some louder, some good listeners, only Boris says the most interesting thing just as we arrive and then passes out really early.
Brilliant!
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*curtsies*
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Apologies for the gender mistake raincoaster. My mental picture is undergoing reassignment. I’m a bit slow. Give me a few days.
I have this old fashioned feeling that we are all either ladies or gentlemen on this blog.
Happy weekend everyone!
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Are there any other sorts Jack , than ladies and gentlemen . unless you wish to retitle the guestas at this large party as, TARTS & VICARS.
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Anyway it often dawns on the most thick headed Trot, such as yours truly,
Would you like to expand upon Trotskyism a bit, Jack? I’ve never knowingly met a Trotskyite. My vague understanding was that he advocated a global communist revolution, while Stalin went for socialism in one country (Russia).
Somehow or other, I have never been attracted by Communism, even if it was all the rage some 50 years ago. If nothing else, all Marxist writers employ their own opaque special language, which I found exceedingly difficult to understand.
What little interest I had in Marxism died upon reading, or rather ploughing through with an icebreaker, the first ten or so chapters of Capital. I concluded that Marx was a very clever classical economist in the mould of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who had come up with a neat explanation for the phenomenon of profit using the Labour Theory of Value (which I rejected). Marx’s misfortune, in some ways, was to be the last classical economist. More or less at the time he was writing, economic thought was being developed by Jevons, Walras, and Menger and others into neo-classical Utilitarian economics, in which the emphasis shifted from the labour theory of value to a utility theory of value. To the best of my knowledge, this remains the conventional wisdom – although the discipline of economics seems to generate subcults in much the same way as Christian fundamentalists.
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idlex
You’re about a million times more likely to meet an ex-Trot than a Trot. If we all got together without squabbling for long enough we would be the biggest (ex)political movement in the country.
Yes you are right. Trotsky stuck to the idea of internationalism but don’t get too cosy on the idea. You could argue that because Stalin had to face the impossibility of building Utopia he was forced to be more ‘practical’ – if you count the murder of millions to keep a semblance of the Utopia going as ‘practical’ – than was Leon who was never put to the test.
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raincoaster – thankyou, yes, I wouldn’t dream of “make[ing] pointed remarks about punctuation marks.”
Y’all: perhaps we are the bloggers and Boris the blogee?
Jack and idlex – I just love all this Trotski and Stalin stuff. More more. Don’t be nervous about drawing parallels with our own government today will you?
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Jack and idlex – I just love all this Trotski and Stalin stuff. More more.
I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Jack, Jaq. What I know about it all could be written on the back of a thrupenny stamp, with space left over for my appreciation of Freud.
My principal aversion to socialists and communists (and I suppose Trots) in my university days was that they were all so horribly grim. Indeed, they all continually seethed with barely-suppressed rage. No sooner had one casually remarked on the weather, as one does, than they would launch into a condemnation of capitalism, its contradictions, the alienation of working class, the coming long-overdue proletarian revolution, and the inconsequentiality of the today’s weather in the onward march of history. I paraphrase, of course.
I used to find them so tedious and dogmatic that I would simply make up some excuse (“Oh gosh, I’ve run out of tobacco again!”) and depart, leaving them to continue subversively plotting the overthrow of capitalism.
Later, when I’d found out a bit more about it all, I took to prodding them into trying to explain the Marxian Theory of Surplus Value. None of them had a clue what this was, of course, but they would bluster away for a while, making fools of themselves, to my intense delight.
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idlex – excellent! I know what you mean about the communist rebels. They always tended to be pale and thin and not good with women (apologies Jack – I’m sure there are exceptions to every rule and you and the obviously gorgeous Hitch bros were the exceptions as I’m guessing Chris will happily confirm himself) I can’t seem to put a foot right with one particular ex-trot this weekend. And I’m so nice really
Freud of course was a dick and largely full of rubbish, especially about women. He makes one worthwhile general point and EVERYTHING he comes out with MUST be true. Anyone actually reading his stuff can see that it’s mostly a product of the time. Better reading the greek philosophers in my view.
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Wow, things were very different over here. We went through our Communist period back in the Thirties and then achieved a certain level of socialism with which we could all live. Because so many Canadians were independent farmers, trappers, etc, the whole “workers of the world” thing didn’t really resonate with them.
Our scrawny, neurasthenic bores at University were the Libertarians and the Nihilists. The former ran around babbling about Ayn Rand (whose name they could not pronounce) and the latter ran around babbling about how we were all doomed, so what was the point of anything. I used to adore getting them all worked up and then saying “But you are here at university…tell me why again?”
I was once on a peace march and I’d volunteered to push a wheelchair. Let’s just say there should be load limits for those things, and I was struggling to push my appointed man-mountain over the Burrard Bridge in the four hours allotted to the march. We were overtaken by Anarchist for Peace, who very kindly took turns pushing the geezer in the wheelchair. I must say, they were quite friendly.
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What is Boris hair
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jaq: I believe the best book written about the Trotskist schism is Animal Farm. If my memory isn’t playing tricks (a distinct possibility when I haven’t had any coffee yet) the Trotsky figure is Snowball.
I was never a doctrinaire Leninist nor Trotskyite, but I did prefer Trotsky because A) he hadn’t become a murderous despot and B) he hadn’t actually been proven wrong, unlike Marx.
It seems there are basic human qualities of which none of the Communist leadership was aware. It turns out that as people are pushed further and further into systemic oppression, they cope rather than revolt. The workers of the world were never going to get so desperate that they united, partly because the desperation isn’t evenly spread geographically, but mostly because people are sheep. They actually tend to revolt AFTER long periods of oppression, when things start to get better. Look at China, South Africa, the US itself.
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Animal Farm.
When I first read this I simply thought it was a wonderfully imaginative story. Tears came to my eyes when the horse (who was always saying, “I will work harder.”) was sent off to the knacker’s yard. It took my older (and wiser) brother to explain to me that it was actually all about the Soviet Union.
But then, I was only 12 at the time.
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That something is fictional doesn’t mean it’s not true.
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Getting back to my point about people being sheep…sorry, not in my most Disneyesque mood lately. Now, I’m not sure of the policy of this blog, so I’m fine if Melissa or Wibbler or anyone wants this taken down. You can replace it with this link if you want. Otherwise, here it is.
Excerpted from Vanity Fair, March 1991
The Years of Living Dangerously
a profile of Ryszard Kapuscinski by Stephen Schiff
“I want to tell you now something,” he says quietly. “You know, like
every Polish writer I was censored, for forty years. The most
difficult result of censorship is self-censorship, because it changes
your way of thinking, and it’s completely unconscious after a time.
All of us after the Communists, we all have to fight this, and I am
fighting all the time. But the reason I am saying this here, in this
place [the former Warsaw Ghetto]: you know, Hannah Arendt in her book
about Eichmann trial, Eichmann in Jerusalem, she was unable to
understand why the Jews were going so passively to their death – why
the Holocaust was possible, why there was no resistance. But I
understand it, because I was there and I saw the thing. And I have an
answer that I would say to Hannah Arendt.
“There was nothing strange in the behaviour of those people. It was
natural. Because if you don’t see any hope, you are very passive. I’m
not speaking of individuals. You always find a hero willing to fight
against everybody. But the masses, if you put them in a situation of
extreme hardship, they beome very passive. Lack of hope paralyzes
their will, paralyzes their brain, paralyzes their movement. That’s
why people who are really in a famine, who have real hunger, do
nothing. They are waiting for death, unable to move. If you went to
the market in Ethiopia during the famine, you would see that the
market is full of food. And around the market, you have people dying
of hunger. So your first reaction is to ask yourself why these people
don’t just attack the market dealers – the food is right there. Plenty
of food. Their lives are at stake. But if you ask that, you are like
Hannah Arendt and you don’t understand what it means to be in a
situation of complete desperation with no way out. It makes you
paralyzed.”
But wait a minute, I say. You of all people have witnessed the
opposite. You’ve been there when a change, a revolution, becomes
possible. He smiles. “Yes, you’re right,” he says. “When a revolution
comes, it is at the very moment when there is some improvement. But
improvement is too slow, too limited – that’s when people revolt. But
first they have to be set in some motion. If you are in a motionless
situation, you will never revolt.”
He seems to be formulating a kind of Newtonian physics of revolution.
Laws of political inertia, political velocity. The very thing that
happened in Eastern Europe in 1989, that happened in South Africa in
1990, that continues in the Soviet Union even now. A body at rest will
remain at rest. And a body in motion…
“It’s true,” he says. “I was not in Pinsk at the time, but I know
people who witnessed the liquidation of the ghetto in Pinsk. At that
time there were some 30,000 people in the ghetto of Pinsk. And when
the moment of the Final Solution came, they were sent through the
town, in columns. Rabbis marched at the head of each column. And in
columns – one huge, huge column – they walked to the place which is
about ten kilometers outside of town, in a small forest. There were
mass graves dug there, long graves, and on the opposite side of every
grave was a Nazi soldier with a machine gun. And the Jewish people of
Pinsk were taken to the verge of the grave and were shot. One row fell
in the grave, and the next row came, was shot, fell down, and the next
row, shot, fell down – in silence. All in silence.
“The machine gun in World War II was still a very heavy instrument,
and those soldiers became, after some minutes, very tired. So they
asked the Jews to stop so the soldiers could rest and smoke a
cigarette. Then the soldiers would be sitting on the dirt piles of the
gave, smoking cigarettes and taking a rest. After resting for some
time, they picked up their machine guns, and they asked the rabbis to
walk again, and again they continued to shoot. There were eyewitnesses
to this, because some people survived. So Hannah Arendt couldn’t
understand it, but it is understandable. If you are in Pinsk, and you
are already so desperately run-down – no food, sick, hopeless, no way
to escape – you will just follow the orders of your religious leaders.
You will march in columns. You will wait while they smoke. You will go
to your death.”
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oh yes, it needs to be said that I combed the web on three different search engines and I can definitely say that if that is posted elsewhere but in my blog (typed in by hand thank you very much, some things are still done the old way) it is very well hidden indeed. This is the only way to show this snippet of the article to you.
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jaq
I thought I was good with women but they didn’t agree.
raincoaster
“I was never a doctrinaire Leninist nor Trotskyite, but I did prefer Trotsky because A) he hadn’t become a murderous despot and B) he hadn’t actually been proven wrong, unlike Marx.”
I think this the point of LTs attraction to young whippersnappers like my earlier self who confused criticism with rejection, and replaced that which they rejected with a non-critical idea that just because soemthing (Trotskyism in power) had not been tried and found wanting then it was probably OK. Possibly the effects of all the weed helped with the general fatheadedness – who says cannabis isn’t bad for you?
If someone had bought more of Adolf’s watercolours he may have just been a grumpy but moderately prosperous artist. If Trotsky had ousted Stalin I don’t think much would have been different. Either Trotsky would have compromised the unworkable Marxist Leninist theory with nationalism in much the same way or he would have attempted to put the fairy tale into action and been replaced quite soon by someone else.
If you chaps recall Snowball was rather a scumbag as well. It’s just that thieves fall out. My favourite was the donkey, whose name I forget, but I wish he could join us on this blog!
Incidentally although jaq and others are quite right to point out Leninist/Stalinist/Trotskyist traits in various elements of the political classes and the commentariat – la Hewitt and Eddy Meyer spring to mind – it is as well to remember that we will get a chance to replace them, well the political ones anyway.
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raincoaster
many thanks for the typing out. I can’t think of anything to say.
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Your welcome. I think, whether one agrees or disagrees with the thoughts expressed, these are words which should not be forgotten. That man has seen revolutions; he’s lived it. He knows.
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Now I have something to say after reflection. The problem with crowds is that they tend to intimdate the individuals in them. This can work like the situation described in raincoster’s communique. At the other end it can underpin the violent behaviour of the mob. When I went on the ProTest demo the other week we started out as a group of individuals. Although it didn’t get oppressive I was a little concerned with how people fell into chants. Now I am not saying for one moment that any of the courteous people around me were on the point of lynching animal rightists but once the chant begins it seems to me that there is an insidious invitation to submerge the individual in the crowd.
Isaiah Berlin’s lifelong horror of violence was sparked by seeing a mob in Czarist Russia fall upon and murder a policeman. I don’t suppose the Czarist police service was staffed by George Dixons but it may well have been the that most if not all of the mob would not as individuals have killed the man if they had the power – e.g. a sniper’s rifle – to do so. Perhaps the same might be true of the Polish Jews. Many as individuals, or perhaps twos or threes, threatened by men with guns may have tried to save themselves however futile the effort.
No doubt the pack instinct had some evolutionary advantage in ancient Africa or East Anglia. Like so many of our evolved behaviours it needs some conscious moderation.
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There’s a vicious Darwinian point that could be made here, but even I am not quite jaded enough to make it.
The idea that people take up arms against their sea of troubles just after the tide has turned is an intriguing one. It certainly makes sense out of the messes in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. I see Senator McCain has told Iraquis that if they don’t get their shiite together the Americans will pull out and leave Iraq to Iraquis; I have to ask if that’s a threat or a long-overdue promise? Getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a good thing (if also long-overdue), but the predictable result of this improvement was a natural demand for more improvement, immediately, and the aggressive taking of action by those who were not satisfied to see control handed over to intermediaries and Haliburton operatives.
What do we want? Freedom.
When do we want it? Now.
In this I wholeheartedly support Senator McCain (oh god, please don’t tell any of my relatives I agree with a Republican!) if for different reasons. Again, if it gets what you want accomplished, perhaps it’s best not to put the motivation under the microscope or we’ll never get anything accomplished.
Canadians have a long and proud tradition as peacekeepers. It was perhaps our mistake that we thought that would translate into peacebuilding.
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You’re right on the blogging front Idlex.
To be a purist in the blogosphere sense one would have to have a blog to be officially a ‘blogger’
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In an institution such as a school was the premise as to the desirability of uniformity.
Taking uniformity onto the street is what would occur under such an authority as Mao. Even under this lot of so-called social levellers , we haven’t yet reached the summit of that perverted logic.
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Mac – there’s time yet: they’ve already mooted a ban on hoodies which Boris opposed remember because they rely on private/state cctv rather than proper policing.
raincoaster – I recommend Stephen Fry’s book on Hitler (can’t remember the title but I can get it) sort of comes in two books really; the first is excellent and deals with the possible outcome if someone got their wish and could go back in time and stop Hitler comming to power. The 2nd seemed to attempt to justify homosexuality. basically, sometimes it’s better to deal with the devil you know, who everyone can see is noticably wrong, rather than chaos.
Anyway, in my book Iraq was an illegal war and we shouldn’t be there.
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Is this the best read blog for a Tory MP? Or any MP come to that?
Whose gets the most hits? I love data.
http://www.elleeseymour.blogspot.com
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I’ll check those books out Jaq; I love Stephen Fry.
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Elle Seymour
At the last count this website got an average of 10,000 hits per day which is astounding for such a homespun outfit. It reflects well on Boris I think and what he represents: openness and free communication. It takes some courage to allow all and sundry to have their say and allow them to throw a few rotten eggs at you.
Thank you for joining us on the comment front.
Melissa @ Boris Johnson Office
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I always have my worst moments of Cartesian doubt before breakfast. I am grateful for the many websites that are listed by e-fellows (used agenderly, a new word created just now) because new ideas are brought to bear and old ones presented from a new angle but how do we get anywhere in this plethora of text?
Maybe after breakfast….
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I wonder if I’ve got a touch of logical positivism?
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If you check out David Milliband’s blog, he says it cost £6,000 to set up and many bloggers are outraged at this exhorbitant cost for what is nothing more than a ministerial site. What was the cost of setting up Boris’ blog, how much does it cost to run? It’s only fair to get answers from parties. 10,000 hits is truly amazing. And thanks for giving a personal reply too, unlike Minister Milliband.
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Jack, sounds like logical negitivism to me, with a side order of caffeine deprivation. Better luck after lunch, perhaps?
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Ellee
It’s all on a bit of shoestring budget : what makes it great are all of YOU who join us. Volunteers are running it and gave us the site in the first place. So THANK YOU AGAIN for your great contributions, and a tap on the back for us who do the backroom stuff too! Well done. The best things are free.
I’m outraged at the cost of the Minister’s site and feel strongly it should be banned in favour of a plainer more user-friendly one that would run at a fraction of the currect costs.
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raincoster
A stiff cup of the old Assam usually does it.
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Jack, a stiff cup of Assam can conquer almost anything.
Melissa:
Are you turning socialist? Woohoo, I made a convert!
Milliband’s site cost is laughable. At that price, every taxpayer should get a dozen roses from Larry Ellison every time they sign on. This site is extremely lively (as you can see) well-moderated with thought and discretion, and robust. I don’t think it’s had a single outage in the time I’ve been around.
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You are an angel raincoaster – hope you get the book soon (posted yesterday!)
ps not sure about the conversion quite yet though…
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raincoaster:
since when has anything that the socialists do , or did , cost nothing. To quote that old bushy eyebrowed ex -chancellor of ours , in the days when they didn’t even bother to bury the dead , ” We’ll squeeze those with money so hard that their pips will squeak” They haven’t changed to this day. The truth is they are squeezing those without money until their pips squeak. Only public employees are to be able to retire at an age when they might still enjoy their twilight years. They went on strike again yesterday,” to protect their right to live off the backs of the real workers in the land. Socialism stinks today as it always did , ask the USSR and all the other ex members of the club.
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Thanks, Melissa. If the book was posted yesterday then, with the ice bridge melting and the dogs unable to pull a full sledload, it should get here in about seven days, give or take.
How’s Boris getting around these days, what with no bike and all? I just went out for the first rollerblade of the season, and the sport has much to recommend it, not least of which is that your wrists are armed with fierce, unbreakable fiberglass and velcro contraptions which enable you to bounce harmlessly off cars, telephone poles, and large Frenchmen.
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Mac, good heavens, the USSR was no more socialist than Tony Blair! The USSR was Fascist, and Blair is, of course, doctrinaire Opportunist.
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Yes raincoaster , < i> we know that , but talk to the people on the ground, as I have done over the decades, and they were all under the impression, ( because they were told so) , that they lived in a socialist Heaven or hell, where they had a vegetable every week. One week was cabbage week ( again) in East germany, and if you had youir ration cat=-rds , and had been good to the authorities , next week you’d be excused cabbage, and would have sauerkraut instead.They couldnt wait for the monthly allowed delivery ,( if you had relatives in The Bundes -republik), of coffee. Whatever the reality; it all went under the banner of socialism.
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I believe that Trotsky one characterised the Soviet Union as having a socialist economy with a fascist political structure. (The old boy had the occasional insight). This is a double no-no. If we are insisting on boolean dimensions then we can have
socialist economy + fascist political structure (Soviet Union)
market economy + fascist political structure (arguably Nazi Germany though National Socialist policies did have a significant socialist content, more likely Musso’s Italy, China today)
socialist economy + open society political structure (Western Europe at current stage, India, Chile)
market economy + open society political structure (USA, Japan)
However I prefer continuous dimensions with the odd singularity and of course there is not really independence between the axes..
A pure market economy is not a priori morally better than a pure socialist one but experience seems to indicate that socialist economies are wasteful. It might be possible for a sufficiently authoritarian command economy (located nearer the socialist/fascist area than many others) to respond to climate change by oppressive means where the living standards of the masses are reduced drastically. However it seems more likely that a liberal capitalist economy, located not at the market extreme of the economy axis and with an open society political system prepared to intervene in the economy carefully by making green issues an objective force in the market, will be successful.
What’s this thread about again?
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Jack :socialist economies are wasteful. Never a truer word spoken, especially about the pseudo post-modernist socialist society, such as the one in which we live.
You missed one country out of the list you made in Re.category of government. Market economy with neo communistic tendecies : viz The UK .
One man thinks he sits on God’s right hand . He at No 11 thinks he is God.
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Jack, I thought this was the thread to show support for the Protection from Tourists League. Can we count on your support?
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We are all tourists in the Great World of Life raincoster and it is often our fate to be run down by the Blond Reaper on the Bicycle of Destiny.
Having said that I am a signatory to the Great Charter of the PTL.
There used to be game on I Haven’t a Clue which was advice for tourists in London. Some good bits I remember are
Have you tried the famous echo in the British Library Reading Room?
London cab drivers love to haggle over the fare.
‘Pig’ is an affectionate piece of Cockney slang used to address policemen.
I suppose the latest is that the shadow Minister for HE likes to cycle around the capital incognito so he can chat to ordinary people but he really loves it if you recognise him and jump in front of his bike.
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raincoaster
Boris not fully recovered enough to ride bike. He’s off to China next week, so that should give him a rest from London traffic and he should come back all the stronger for it.
Thanks for asking
ps your rollerblading sounds kl and I can see you slickly weaving your way through the morass of people/obstacles and gliding from a to b effortlessly – you genie
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Melissa, thanks for the update. Unfortunately, my rollerblading tends to go like my posting…I cruise along smoothly for awhile, then somebody cuts me off and I spend the next fifteen minutes throwing references (or just wet newspapers) at him until he backs off. So, no change.
If I had any money I’d offer to buy Boris a drink if he’s routed through Vancouver; alas, as a good socialist I of course have none. Maybe I can talk the Irish Heather into letting me run a tab? Will keep you posted.
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Jack, I think the Guardian called him The Pale Rider. Should this worry us?
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Boris for PM
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