Goodbye to Blair
Blair has nothing more to say to us: he should go at once
Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. You have only to read the latest memo from Downing Street to see that something in the bunker has finally snapped. Maybe they are putting Orozac in the water cooler. Maybe they’ve disconnected the television. Maybe they have special dummy editions of the papers, produced by Alastair Campbell’s gnomes in the dungeons and then brought up on silver salvers to where Tony and Cherie recline on their couches and dangle grapes into their crazy mouths.
Here we are, with British soldiers being killed almost daily in Iraq and Afghanistan on missions that are growing in scale and horror. We have rises in gun crime, rises in unemployment, rises in interest rates — and these flaming lunatics in Downing Street seriously expect the nation to line the streets with bunting and shower Tony with confetti as he goes on a six-month lap of honour, a “farewell tour” in which he accepts the praises of a smiling people.
Rather than sorting out Iraq, it is proposed that he should “reconnect” with his public and spend his glorious swansong on shows such as Blue Peter and Songs of Praise. We must rebuild public affection for the grand finale, say the Downing Street maniacs, thought to be Lord Gould, Jonathan Powell and Benjamin Wegg-Prosser. “He needs to go with the crowds wanting more. He should be the star who won’t even play that last encore.”
I don’t know which of the three wrote that last sentence, but he must be clinically insane. Do they seriously imagine that, after nine years of irritation, culminating in the Iraq war, they can persuade the British public to give way to a fever of Blair-o-mania, with women throwing their knickers at his departing beam and men sobbing and begging him to play that “last encore”?
How monstrous, how sickening, that they should target poor old Songs of Praise, watched by millions of lusty religious warblers in a state of apolitical innocence. They want to sing hymns. They don’t want Tony Blair popping out from behind a pew and using the programme to reinsert himself in public esteem. They want to Praise the Lord, not the blasted Prime Minister.
And yet the really terrifying thing is that Blair seems to share the assumptions behind the Downing Street memo. He wants to go out with that sensation of triumph. He wants the laurels on his brow, and the captive tribesmen manacled before his chariot, and the matrons ululating his name from the rooftops.
In his indifference to reality, he is chilling, Neronian. This is no longer about the interests of the country. It is not even about the Labour Party. It is all about him, his desire to prosecute his long-running feud with Gordon Brown, and his vainglorious desire to be well remembered — to have a “legacy”.
Well, it is not a good enough reason to remain in office. The point of being prime minister is to serve the interests of the country, not himself. It is obvious that Blair intends to spend his last year simply luxuriating in power, while all 3,000-odd government spin édoctors (or as many as remain loyal) squander untold millions burnishing his image.
It is a disgraceful project, and it must be prevented. I say this with no selfish, strategic or party objective. In fact, from the Tory point of view, it would be ideal if he stayed on and on and on. Blair has the distinction of bringing civil war not just to Iraq, but also to the Labour Party. It is quite stupefying that Siôn Simon MP — the man we all assumed would be Ney to Blair’s Napoleon — should revolt in this way. How many ministers and understrappers resigned yesterday, because their Prime Minister would not resign immediately himself? Was it six or seven? For 10 years, we in the Tory party have became used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing; and so it is with a happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour Party.
There is a case for hoping that Blair hangs on, and that the violence intensifies, and that, when Brown finally takes over, the damage is irreparable and the earth sown with salt. Let them spend another six months in strife, and then the whole party will be riddled with resentments of Bosnian durability.
Yet even as I make this case, I feel a sense of weariness. Whatever the narrow calculations of party-political interest, they are outweighed by my overwhelming feeling that Blair has had his chips. If we are going to have Gordon Brown or Alan Johnson in six months or a year, why can’t we have them now? Let’s see what they have to say, and get stuck into them. What’s the point of a Blair Queen’s Speech in November, when we know that none of its promises will be enacted by Blair?
It was absolutely fatal for Downing Street to concede this week that he would definitely be gone by next May 31, because that means there is no reason why he should not go by February; and, if he might go by February, there is no reason why he should not go now.
Except one, as we discover. He wants his “farewell tour”, complete with cheering crowds at “iconic buildings”. We should not waste a penny of taxpayers’ money in supporting this fantasy. He should scrap his trip to the Middle East, not least since Brown (or Johnson) may take a very different line next year. The venture has no function beyond show-boating and self-puffery.
Blair has failed in his great ambition to take Britain into the euro; he has failed to reform the welfare state. He has done some good things and he has some excellent qualities. But he has nothing more to say to the British public except that he wants to give them another six months to show that they really love him and will really miss him.
That is no basis on which to claim the tenancy of Downing Street. If he wishes to avoid an assassination, he should stay not upon the order of his going, but go at once.
248 Comments
Well argued and very true, idlex.
Thank you, Flo’.
When everyone came piling in saying “But they didn’t have television sets in 1930 Germany”, I was at first inclined to simply concede the point – along with my now well-known filthy mind.
But then I found myself constructing a couple of counter-arguments. I do this quite a lot: argue one side, and then argue the other. Put things together, and then pull them to pieces.
Hegel had a name for this process, but I’ve completely forgotten what.
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I found myself constructing a couple of counter-arguments. I do this quite a lot: argue one side, and then argue the other. Put things together, and then pull them to pieces.
Hegel had a name for this process, but I’ve completely forgotten what
The dialectic, or dialectical logic. Socrates and Marx used it too.
Colleen
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Dialectic?
idlex, you own this thread. It’s wonderful to read comments I have to think over before replying to.
When you say a politician… “should not only come over as being an ordinary person, but … should take very great care to remain an ordinary person” I would alter this slightly to “should take very great care to remain to appear to be an ordinary person.”
Everyone wants to vote for somebody like their smartest, best friend, but when times are tough they want someone with a great deal more of the “divinely chosen” about them, which hearkens back to Boris’(Euripedes’) first sentence. It’s instructive to watch Dubya switch between good ol’ boy and Yale-trained scion of Prepitude, a switch best observed in this video post from Metro’s blog (2nd video, although the first one is brilliant and fun, too).
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GMTA
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must remind you that the ‘great’ dictators lived in an age where the media was in it’s infancy. (Jaq + PaulD + Raincoaster)
Well, they had the press, radio, and cinema, and used them all. I imagine that most people in Germany knew what Hitler looked like. Did the advent of television really change the situation that much?
And it might be said that our media are still in their infancy. Here we are, after all, chattering away using an entirely new medium. And it’s one that appears to be of a much more grass root nature than any other. With the old media, owning a newspaper, radio or TV station put the power to form opinion, in a one-way information flow, into the hands of their proprietors. The internet would seem to be now redistributing that power, and giving everyone a voice, in a two-way information exchange.
500 years ago, Europe had a single moral authority in the form of the Roman Catholic Church, and you went to church every Sunday to be told what to think, and the price of thinking anything else was your life. The Reformation might be regarded as the product of Gutenberg’s printing press, which allowed other ideas to circulate, and break the Church’s monopoly. And as new media have been added, there’s been an ever-widening diversity of views. That process seems set to continue.
I think that part of that process also involves bringing people back down to a human scale. The Popes were, in their heyday, superhuman figures. But in the television era, it seems that the best performers are the most natural and relaxed and humorous. The end result of that process is that we will all become ordinary people. And Boris will just be somebody else we know.
A corollary of this is that it’s really only in information-poor regions of the world that it remains possible to control public opinion. Our various modern fundamentalisms all appear to flourish in the poorest regions of the world. Rather than bombing Afghanistan, we might do better to wire the country for broadband.
Dialectic I assume is the word meant I didn1`t know it was especially associated with Hegel though , surely this Platonic or at the very least Greek originally . The concept of Dialectic is ingrained of in our Parliament Court and like` `rhetoric` a concept that is part of the Hellenic stream of culture often against the Christian . It is suggestive I think that the post Christina Environmental new agey modern religion-lite ideas seem to instinctively come into conflict with the classical legacy which was important I to the Enlightenment period . We are at bottom here talking about a conflict between feeling and rational thought which you can dress in a number of conceptual dualisms ( sorry couldn`t think of better words).
In the development of English Common Law dialectic was Saxonised and the presence of opposing views in court , not one expert , was a guarantee of balance and truth . You will see that in this idea is the admission that absolute truth is beyond us and therefore religion is antagonistic also to the Anglo Saxon tradition as well .
I can see that this sounds a bit pretensions but these ideas are the long view to the Cameron /Blair problem that we have been talking about .
I like your Gutenberg / Protestant point and I think in talking about media you are really getting to the heart of the problem with politics today. I first came across the idea of the effect of the medium on the message years ago in Marshall Macluhan . I don1`t know if this is still famous it certainly was the men are from Mars of its day in the 60s ( I wasn`t there !!!) In this book there is much discussion of Gutenberg man , his typically `dialectic` or linear modes of thought and why he is becoming extinct .
Trying to pull some threads together David Cameron , learning from Blair is trying to appeal not only beyond the party but also `subliminally` to the electorate . Tree hugging , female A lists and other attempts to alienate sections of the party are really anti marketing ,( se Burberry losing clients to move brand up market etc.). So this is sophisticated marketing operating below the level of dialectic or even rational thought .
These ideas are well known. The dumbing down of and emotionalising of discourse is a process that many of us regard as virtually barbarian. This is the world in which David Cameron has to play his image games and that is why some of his `thinking` is barbaric in that it is by passes old style debate completely . It is no coincidence that the Nixon Kennedy debate with its famous demonstration of image over content was years ahead of the process here and whilst I love the good old US there are many things I prefer about the British tradition with its attendance to traditional `Gutenberg` thinking . In many ways it is under attack , legally Constitutionally and in particular by the Blair administrations preference for media and briefing over parliament. So Idlex there are pluses but also minuses to the develoment of media
I hope that ( Jaq) is po faced enough for you . Or if Poo faced .. a fact . Every 8 days the human race produces Poo the size of the great Pyramid . Is the above analytical genius or a contribution to the pile ?
Not sure myself.
And Thalia you may have know my rule of thumb thing but I bet you don1t know the top selling artist /group ,single in the UK and Europe in the 80s . It was shakin Stevens . I have won money with this suprising fact . feel free to use it .
Apols for spelling , at work and must do some !!!!!!
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Paul Newman – PAUL!!! I was jokingly referring to being s—faced as in drunk, which you no doubt understood. Cheek! I’ve never been ‘pretty’ but there’s no need to rub it in! What shall we do with him Thalia – is it hessian sack and excess kitten time?
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I know you like short snappy answers, even though you write long, tedious messages, Paul, so here’s one just for you: that was not analytical genius, nor even a contribution to the pyramidal pile of excrement, but wind, vast amounts of wind. No doubt you can – and probably will – give us chapter and verse on the amount of methane being released into the earth’s atmosphere by cattle farts. Please resist the temptation to add to it.
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Shakin Stevens? Hmph that’s nothing, my sisters best mate used to date Robert Plant.
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Doug Pirranah, sorry about that , I did wonder if I was trying to take on to much( I usually cut and edit considerably if I `m trying to get my stuff in anywhere
This any better its for our local Paper but the summary transcript is fabulous ( ie niot my bit)
Dear Sir
Richard Reid was, of course, one of many Terrorists associated with Finsbury Park Mosque during the piratical reign of Abu Hamza . I got an insight to his life talking to a Croydon based friend who used to play pool with him at his South London haunt the `Governor General` pub. In those days he was just a common or garden `nutter` but a terrifying one nonetheless . Islington residents may not have followed his subsequent career closely. He was caught trying to blow a plane full of Americans out of the sky by the passengers. The recent anniversary of 9.11 will have reminded us of what has driven US foreign Policy ever since . On that plane, on that day, it drove his would be victims to tie him up with their belts and beat him to a pulp before the authorities could apprehend him. What a terrible shame..
We may find the way Americans do things funny sometimes but on this occasion I like the style of the judge who finally sent this maniac to his richly deserved incarceration … here is the end of the summing up
` courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done. The very President of the United States through his officers come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, ! to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice. See that flag, Mr. Reid? That’s the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. And it always will. Mr. Custody Officer. Stand him down.`
Perhaps the patriotism of Americans can sometimes be misguided but many reading these stirring words will regret that we are no longer allowed to take any pride in our own country at all .`
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raincoaster – just seen the tragedy in Montreal, frightening.
Also saw a good prog on 9/11 tother night: The Falling Man. Excellent prog. It highlighted the damage well meaning journalists can do to folk. Made me think about the current etiquette journa;ists adopt towards ‘the public’ – especially those with the financial power of big national newspapers. It’s a big brother world!
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The dumbing down of and emotionalising of discourse is a process that many of us regard as virtually barbarian. This is the world in which David Cameron has to play his image games and that is why some of his `thinking` is barbaric in that it is by passes old style debate completely. (Paul_Newman)
I sometimes wonder whether this dumbing-down process might be the consequence of simply not having enough time to think clearly. In his book, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, physicist Richard Feynman wrote:
To do high, real good physics you need absolutely solid lengths of time, so that when you’re putting ideas together that are vague and hard to remember, it’s very much like building a house of cards and each of the cards is shaky, and if you forget one of them the whole thing collapses again. You don’t know how you got there and you have to build them up again, and if you’re interrupted and kind of forget half the idea…
And what’s true of high physics is true of any sort of rational thinking. It takes time. And in our increasingly frenetic modern world, not many people have that kind of time. If you want to get a message through to such busy people, you have to condense it into a newspaper headline or a 5-second TV soundbite. And since a picture is said to be worth a thousand words, there is an increasing tendency to use images to try to convey quite complex ideas. And if it can’t be done, then the ideas are simplified to the point where they can be expressed in the available time or space.
And even if we happen not to be particularly busy, we are constantly being interrupted. Living in a modern city entails being regularly interrupted by ambulance and police sirens, car horns and alarms, ringing telephones, bawling children, shouting drunks, low flying jets and helicopters, etc, etc, etc. Any train of thought is, in such circumstances, regularly derailed.
I found myself reading David Hume a while back, and noticing the gentle conversational style of his writing, and thinking that it must have all been composed in some placid circumstance that allowed him to think and write for hour after hour, back in the 18th century, painstakingly constructing arguments. Nobody writes like that any more – perhaps because nobody can. And if anyone can, few people have the time to read it.
So I’d suggest that a significant contributor to the dumbing-down process is simply a lack of time in which to think, muse, ponder. And once we become unable to think clearly, we necessarily fall back on emotional gut feeling or instinct, making snap decisions which are inherently ill-considered. In that manner we indeed become barbarians.
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‘I sometimes wonder whether this dumbing-down process might be the consequence of simply not having enough time to think clearly’ (Idlex)
Surely any of us who have got enough time to be sharing our thoughts on here have no excuse for not thinking clearly.
I know what you mean though, the working day now often starts with having to troll through an inbox through of bollocks emails that people expect you to read. you knwo that if you ignore them some irritating person is going to successfully navigate the switchboard and catch you offguard, asking about the bollocks they sent you three weeks ago you never had the courtesy to reply to.
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Idlex
What I particularly like about your contribution is that the ruminative form it takes is of a piece with the content.. I agree and yet I feel that somehow there is something more to be said . As I `m a bit rushed I `ll have to forego rhyme and meter for this last thoughts
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Its not up to the level of fingers searching through his hair for a taste of happiness but its from the heart….( or is it ?)
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Burnt Norton T. S. Eliot
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Paul – you’re at it again, mate. Painful. It’s dull roots, man – you get my drift.
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Steven_L – yeah I know what you mean, especially in this electronic age where you press ‘send’ before running the content through the moopoo checker (do you get that with Norton utilities?). I think part of it is that when people used paper and pens there was time to better merge what one really thinks with what is acceptable or advantageous to say. So I think if this were a paper exchange with letters published in a monthly journal then we would probably be less inclined to say ‘Paul at least my poetry’s supposed to be rubbish, man that’s just painful!’
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Idlex you really are a clever bugger…..good joke don`t you think and at least Jaq and Pirranah leapt before they looked.
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Paul newman – no I reject that charge: apart from the fact that mine was an example of someone saying something before checking (er that WAS the point) I feel it compulsory to have the consideration of T.S.Eliot’s poetry and the word ‘painful’ in the same sentence. I remember reading The Wasteland at A level and I think that was one of his better offerings. I thought T.S. Eliot could be a pretentious git.
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Actually I enjoy Yuvtushenko more. Would like to hear his work recited as it was written though, in russian.
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JAQ -…and ( TS Elliot )was anti semitic ( but then that seems to be acceptable nowdays if you are
a ken Livingstone
b Islamic
c Any commentator on Middle East affairs from the BBC
A bottle of wine ,a quiet table in the Piazza di Spagna ,and you and I could spend a golden evening discussing our favourite pomes JAQ .See you there tommorow , I `m the Italian looking person
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Oh Paul, you are a one – but as an Eliot scholar you will have recognised my quotation from the great poet. Dull roots, man… It is you, old boy, that have fallen into my trap, ha, ha, ha. Seriously, though,it’s not The Four Quartets that are painful, but your tedious assumption that you’re being clever by quoting from from them… Think about what people are actually writing before you leap in…
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huh? I’m not “anti semitic” (anti-Semitic actually) – I AM jewish under jewish law though wasn’t raised a jew.
Apart from that charge the bottle of wine and quiet table sound lovely.
Can I admit a REAL girly passion? Without raincoasters breakfast coming up? I’ve got a bit of a thing about Placido Domingo, I just think he’s the epitome of everything heaven in a suitor – tall, dark, handsome and he used to serenade his wife when they were courting, from underneath her window, and in THAT voice! My mother would have had a fit but in Spain or Italy it’s fine. I just love that. We’re so closed off here, so afraid of ‘getting involved’. That’s what comes from so many people living so close together – you have to learn to ignore each other.
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Oh well that was a conversation stopper – I’m off to get some fava beans and a nice chianti – fffffff
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Pirranah . DAMN YOU TO HELL , FIEND… April is the cruellest month … I missed it . The scream of defeat rang around the office, ( I hope you don`t think I don`t read everything though , just because I`m not up to answering fully )
JAQ …Not you anti-semitic just TS Elliot ( which he was more or less out of a literary tradition).Placido Domingo not my cup of tea .Try Gigli for the most magical tenor . He can sing higher in his full voice than I can in falsetto.
( I `m listening to Old Ska,Wilson Pickett and .. um embarrassing things at the mo)
I think what you say about seperation is interesting.The film `Crash` was in part about this , the play `Closer` also . Both of these I would call `Conservative ` in formal sense (incidentally) and I must admit from a Libertarian base camp, I have been ascending recently into One Nation ideas on Community tradition even dare I say it a sort of quasi-spiritual puzzlement..
The Conservative Party has for a long time been regarded as the Party of the Philistine. In a discussion of a Conservative ( general) Reading list I saw recently for example .Niall Ferguson cropped up endlessly but of Jane Austen ,Rudyard Kipling( who I would defend )Fielding the Cavalier Poets (I would claim).etc. nothing
.I stand with you in defending our right to a broader emotional range than `Men and There Arguements`( Wendy Cope … know it ?)
In the application for candidature for London mayor there is a section requiring you to demonstrate excactly this range. David Cameron clearly thinks it as important as you do
( And yes I have applied…10% seriously really although …, why not ?)
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`|Their Arguments…` …( clunk)
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Wendy Cope – Men and their arguments? Yes, know it well. She was at the Times Literary Festival in Oxford this year but I missed that. And Hay
And Chris Hitchens was at Hay 
(reading CH at mo, along with others, depending on what mood I’m in) Wendy Cope apparently gave out tea and cucumber sandwiches – I would have liked that. Gigli? Oh yes, another fave – I want to find if there’s a good recording of him singing the duet from the pearl fishers but can’t source it so, if you know? Favourite aria? ‘They call me Mimi but my name is….’ go on Paul, name that tune.
Having difficulty ignoring an inexplicable hurt which always seems to be remembered at about 4am and wakes me up so excuse me, I’m going for a nap. Sayonara
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I know very little about Opera but Puccini , a teeny bit , Mimi is La Boheme with the coughing and the tiny frozen hand and so on . I saw this at the Albert Hall(which didn`t work well as a space for this )
I prefer Soul and Guitars myself( but oddly I do have a recording of Gigli singing the Pearl Fishers Duet not on me!)
Wierd last sentence JAQ
Ta ta
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Not wierd at all, just honest. Things that are easy to ignore, or forget, at 3pm amongst the noise and distractions of the day often come to haunt when quiet and off-guard, usually for me around 4am. So if someone’s done something to hurt or annoy that I can’t explain away, it’s easily dismissed when busy, or when I can’t think of the answer to a song say that someone’s asked me about, i’ll usually end up waking up with it in my head, then annoyingly it stays in my head throughout the next day. Murder if it’s the Crazy Frog. (Had to go to McD’s for the toy – the children left the food and pocketed the toy: crazy frog. ARGGHHH)
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bet you’ve all got the crazy frog in your head now, ha haaaaa
dingdingdingding ding ding
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I wonder how many Labour and Liberal (and even Conservative) MP’s are learning all those mushy poems you guys wrote to Boris – so they can taunt him all Autumn in the corridors of power. If I was an MP reading this that’s exactly what I’d do.
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Or sponsor your own “erotic poetry for Boris” contest. That’s what I’d do; more opportunity for press releases.
Gigli was a horrible movie.
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Mushy poems? Hardly! I can’t think of any poem you may be aware of, of mine, that cannot be included under the micturition-take banner. In the best possible taste of course and with with the greatest affection for the subject. Actually my favourite is still ‘PH is like a bacon sandwich’ – just the title should win the turner prize, I should spray paint it on a condom and submit it next year.
but raincoaster – good suggestion. I’ll leave the worthwhile submission to Eliza but will strain to offer my support, and it is a strain, I’ve never been able to take erotic poetry seriously. You see, as a mother, I know only too well that parents can no longer indulge in the free abandon of leisurely sexual play. You hear singles at work don’t you? ‘Well she had leather handcuffs on chains built into her waterbed and I rode all night through her entire Beach Boys collection – talk about good vibrations, she had more toys than Hamleys’ Well ok, you proably don’t hear that now I’ve left. Anyway, married persons sexual office boasts tend to take the form of (if honest) ‘My wife was ironing in her good robe and I thought hey, I can watch Spooks anytime.’ But the truth is you’ve just got the kids to bed and you’re running down the corridor, tearing off clothes, whispering at the top of your voice ‘START, JUST START WITHOUT ME, I’M COMING’ when you hear those three little words – ‘mummy I’m scared’.
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I am also a parent Jak and you made me laugh a lot . I `m afraid I can`t claim my sex life has ever been that exciting … for her . But who cares about that take it away Mr. J Brown
`I got mine, don`t worry bout yours
Get up get on up
Stay on scene
Like a sex machine`
Forget me knot are you seriously in need of help .Call the Samaritans please
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Aren’t those disco lyrics, come to think of it?
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Melissa has been alerted about ‘forget me please’.
For me, writing erotic poetry is a bit like living in a famine and writing odes to a roast beef dinner. It’s just best ignored lest you end up salivating and chewing the furniture – not a good look.
‘Get up offa that thang,
and dance till you feel better’
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JAQ JAQ JAQ! Can`t tell anyone ( in real world )but wife pregnant this AM with second .
and I`m really sorry about the FORGET ME NOT thing I confused a feast with a Lion Bar it was supposed to be (even more ) obviously a spoof.You guessed I assume
Your bottom hunts me / Can`t get comfy !!!!!
If I promise never to do it again will you please forgive me..( Wendy Cope does some great pastiches )
In desperate need of attending to my clients so will not be about so much.
MAY YOU ALLL BE AS HAPPY AS I AM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Congratulations Paul, I can understand how delighted you must be
However, best not to be silly like that again, I’m sure Mrs Boris wouldn’t have thought it funny AT ALL. I’m guessing a ticking off from the Mel-meister is in the pipeline.
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Well, at least we won’t forget you. Congrats.
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OOH!!! Allow a mini rant will you please:
Melanie Philips really gets my goat she really does, pompous stupid mare. I would say she spends FAR too much time in the company of Peter Hitchens after her latest indictment of single mothers but I’m guessing she just didn’t pay attention. Try reading his work Melanie you stupid woman then actually check in with a single mother cause I’m guessing you wouldn’t know one if one hit you in the face. (forgive me but I’d rather bite simon hoggart in the arse).
urghhhhh
By the way, Boris is on ‘Any Questions’ next week, R4 8pm ish fri or around this time sat
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Bloody good answer from one contributor to ‘Any Answers’ on the subject of ‘Depression in Children’ – childhood is a Victorian invention for the upper classes. It wasn’t too long ago that kids aged 6 years old were working down the mines! Some childhood huh? Now it seems if ANYONE does not follow the media prescriptive nuclear family then THEY are to blame for ALL the social ills.
Ooh this gets me so mad I could just stamp on someone’s feet.
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And why is it assumed that having a man around ensures an adult presence??
OK i’ll shush now :-/
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‘Melanie Philips really gets my goat she really does, pompous stupid mare.’ (Jaq)
I bought her ‘Londonistan’ book, I was in London at the time and it freaked me out. By chapter 4 the Israel / Lebanon thing had kicked off and I stopped reading. It ended up getting lost.
So from what you’re saying she doesn’t like single mothers huh? I know she sure as hell don’t like Muslims and that’s coming from an Islamosceptic like me.
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Yeah Steven, another woman who blames societies ills on single mothers – like we CHOSE to be on our own – I wonder how often SHE bakes??
I see the Pope regrets any upset but won’t back down. Very diplomatic I thought.
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HIGNFY Boris episodes are now online:
Part 1 of his first appearance on HIGNFY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ2s6q5VUEo
Just type Boris Johnson into the search engine on youtube to get all the other parts.
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Why is it that people tend to assume, because one has gained fame, that one is an expert on anything one cares to comment on? I mean, even in the US Britney Spears is understood to be nothing more than an occasionally hot pop tart. In the UK she’d have a book deal and a column in the bloody Times.
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Oh yes, so true raincoaster. For some reason Peaches Geldof springs to mind (and I’ve been reliably informed that Celia Walden should too – mind you I reckon Celia could get a column in any mans times). I wonder how both would get on if 4′ tall with a face like a dogs backside?! For some strange reason I don’t think their ‘lirerary skills’ would be appreciated.
The transition from grubby gin-soaked hack to automatic celbrity status intrigues me. Like they’re the demi-Gods of social knowledge. Vintners knowledge more like :-\
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Oh dear there’s a slip I won’t live down in a hurry, I meant ”literary skills’
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NOT A REAL COMMENT:
i posted in response to a journalist’s response to boris’s response to people’s response to a couple of words in this post. (wheee.)
clearly this is world-shaking and someone just reminded me i should have put in a trackback. oops. and now i can’t see any way to do it other than by a comment.
so: hi. i referenced this and Boris’s follow-up reply:
>’I meant no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea who I’m sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity in common with the rest of us.’
, in this post:
It’s fascinating to watch [journalists'] Needs create Errors
>… Boris was
(a)
genuinely pointing out he’d been typing about something QUITE different and had not intended to insult PNGians by referring to a less-than-PC aspect of their history
, and
(b)
very elegantly ripping the living shit out of the wittering parasites who live those lives of (shoutingly displayed) “blameless bourgeois domesticity” which are overwhelmingly the lives of those pseudo-leftwing webels struggling for attention and status in the meeja who had seized upon him as the subject du jour.
Go Boris, go!
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‘Why is it that people tend to assume, because one has gained fame, that one is an expert on anything one cares to comment on?’ (raincoaster)
It’s all part of the ‘dumbing down Britain’ process that the media and government seem to have embarked on.
I mean, has anyone seen the God-awful premium rate quiz show on ITV that comes on in the small hours for a start? Come on, we’re not that stupid yet, are we?
Then there was the other week I watched a film on ITV2. Afterwards they announced that ‘I would be pleased to know’ they were going to repeat it the next night? Come on for God’s sake! I might not be Oxbridge material but I can get the gist of a Hannibal Lecter film in one sitting. Why the hell would I be pleased to know the are putting the same damn movie on 2 nights running?
I don’t know what they are playing at to be honest raincoaster. Perhaps they thought they were losing too much market share of thick-headed people to Murdochs channels. Maybe advertisers pay more for commercials during programs that are guaranteed to be watched by gullible morons. Maybe the ads people have a system of calculating the ‘value per head’ something like:
Number of viewers/average IQ of viewer x number of viewers = slot’s value ratio
No, I think the main reason is they want everyone to switch to digital TV, and the media are so hooked on conning us all the time it’s theonly way they can think of to achieve it. They want to bore us to death with terrestrial TV, whilst constantly trying to persuade us that digital has dozens of channels that all have better programs on, they use selective trailers to do this.
Once you get digital TV of course you find that is not the case. It’s umpteen channels of low budget bollocks like ‘Peaches Geldof goes to bloody Morocco to climb a mountain and discover Islam’, ‘reality’ TV, premium rate quiz shows aimed at the mentally challenged, repeats of old sitcoms, even repeats of old current affairs programs and the same damn movie every night for a week.
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I don’t understand why they’re making such a ridiculous fuss over digital/analog tv in the first place. This should really only be an issue for the people who make their living delivering the TV to the viewers. It shouldn’t matter to anyone in the real world what method the video takes to get to your screens. This is a bullshit issue, frankly.
I’m old enough to remember the expression “Pay tv” and we all laughed, thinking nobody would EVER pay for television. Then they told us it wouldn’t have commercials, and we laughed again because we knew they were lying.
Fortunately, there are some mavericks out there with aerials, and at least the CBC will never abandon it. We’ve got too damn much land to lay cable everywhere!
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