Yes, that’s right – it’s the return of Doctor Who Final Episode Bingo™!

The rules, as explained last time round:

The bingo card contains a number of predictions. If any row of 5, vertically, horizontally or diagonally, occur during the New Year’s Day episode of Doctor Who, you may shout “BINGO!!” at the TV screen. If you are playing the ‘adults-only’ drinking game version of Doctor Who Bingo, take a sip when any prediction comes true, but if there is a bingo you must down whatever it is that you have left in your glass.

Click on the card for the larger version.

As with last time, I didn’t look at any spoilers or rumour sites in constructing the card, so I genuinely have no idea whatsoever if any of the predictions are likely to occur or not occur (although I’m fairly certain many of them won’t). Many thanks to everyone who offered suggestions for squares – I’ve incorporated as many as I could!

I wish every one who reads this blog a very merry Doctor Who Day.

(Joke shamelessly stolen from @comedyfish)

Tim Minchin – White Wine In The Sun [iTunes Link]

There’s a campaign to get a Rage Against the Machine song to Christmas No. 1 as a protest against X Factor. All very funny and everything, but to my mind, much better would be to get a proper Christmas song up the charts. And this is a proper Christmas song. Beautiful, sentimental, and a secular anthem to boot¹ So save the pennies you had earmarked for Killing In The Name, and instead buy White Wine In The Sun by Tim Minchin, on iTunes or HMV or Tesco or anywhere else.

It appeared in the iTunes Store on Monday, and made it up to number 64 before slowly slipping backwards to where it now rests at 73. This is a shame.

So help get it into the top 40 for Christmas and go and buy it now. Tell your friends!

1. Surely any Christmas song which includes the line “I’d rather break bread with Dawkins than Desmond Tutu, To be honest” deserves your support!

I ask you. The cheek of it. Under the auspices of inviting people to comment on an Anti-Homosexuality Bill which will be debated by the Ugandan Parliament on Friday, Auntie has demonstrated its shocking left-wing bias and desperate need to pander to the Gay lobby.

First of all, what makes them think they can raise this issue in the first place? I mean, it’s not like Uganda is a proper country, or that we should care what laws their parliament decide to pass!

And then the BBC have used such a disgracefully loaded question, one clearly designed to galvanise opinion against the actions of the Ugandan government, whilst spreading the news of this legislation to an ever wider audience. The question is framed in terms of ‘executing homosexuals’, instead of providing a more wholesome image of the proposed legislation by wording it in terms of cultural conservation and preserving family values. This is clearly a desperate attempt to make the legislation sound as horrible as possible to bring out the liberals and get themselves some attention.

Don’t believe me? Just look at some typical responses this question has brought crawling out of the woodwork:

Isn’t it strange that the Ugandan parliament doesn’t suggest the death sentence for corruption? Political corruption in Ugandan causes far more misery than gay men. […] This is obscene, hypocritical, prejudiced nonsense. It is something from the Dark Ages.

Robert, UK

What a barbaric and ignorant proposition. If Africa wants help from the west then I see no reason why we should not attatch some cultural conditions to that aid.

A shocked gay man, uk

I feel like I have just stepped in to a demonic parallel universe? Should homosexuals be executed??? And people are actually debating it!

Tim Northyorks

I am a South African and I find the negative attitude of the Ugandan government and parliamentarians barbaric, uncaring and sickening. I have no problems with homosexuals at all. All I know is that people are born homosexuals and have no choice over the matter. It is no different from being born Black, white or brown, or male ,or female. Uganda is guilty of genocide and of violating homosexual people’s civil liberties.

Sizwe Motsoaledi, Giyani

While generally respecting black people as a race and a culture, I can only describe the Ugandan politicians who are supporting this bill as primitive, superstitious barbarians. I hope all the decent Ugandans do not allow their country to become synonymous with violent stupidity. Reject this bill

Rocket Scientist

What are the traditional family values of Uganda? Are they bigotry, hatred, oppression and state-sanctioned murder?

David, Europe

Just disgusting. From a state-funded broadcaster, too. Liberal propaganda of the highest order, paid for by the taxpayer.

When did Auntie lose her way so horribly? Bring back ‘Listen With Mother’, I say.

(Just for avoidance of doubt, yes, this is intended to be satirical… )

1. The question has been updated in the last few hours to ‘Should Uganda debate gay execution?’ But still.

As usual, The Daily Mash has the last word on yesterday’s Pre-Budget Report:

Replying to Mr Darling in the Commons, shadow chancellor George Osborne said: ‘This is a nakedly political exercise designed purely to serve the electoral interests of the Conservative Party.’

He then left his place at the despatch box, crossed the chamber and placed his hands firmly on Mr Darling’s buttocks before kissing him on the lips and whispering ‘you complete me’ in his left ear.

Proof of Tory Suppresion of Climate Denial?

From the Graun’s coverage of ‘Expensesgate II: This Time It’s Pathetic’:

For once, a worthy explenses claim. Got to clear out those sceptics, after all!

@coffeebucks/@thedancingflea

Letters From A Tory:

Sometimes you really have to take your hat off to a Government and say ‘well done’.  During these difficult economic times, it takes real courage to stand up there and deliver a set of policies that will start the long haul back to financial stability, even if it costs them votes in the process.  Yesterday was a great example of a Government really taking control and saying what needed to be said, no matter how politically unpalatable it was - and for that they deserve a great deal of respect.

Bingo!

The latest edition of the House of Comments podcast is here, featuring everybody’s favourite Labour blogger and Doctor Who aficionado Tom Harris MP (no, really!) and the ever-delightful Charlotte Gore.

We ditched the ‘here’s some topics we’re going to talk about’ format this week; instead just hitting record and chatting about politics. I think it worked really well and helped relax the tone of the recording.

We ended up covering a wide range of stuff, too – planted questions at PMQs; the negativity of anonymous commenters; the future of partisan blogging; electoral reform (again) and ongoing ‘class warfare’ were all among the topics that came up. There was also some mild spoilers for The Thick Of It and In The Loop at the end – I hope you don’t mind!

As usual, you can download the MP3 directly, listen in the web player, or subscribe to the podcast using iTunes or indeed the RSS reader of your choice.

Andrew Sullivan explains why he can call himself a member of ‘the conservative movement’ no longer.

Some people have been saying, particularly over the summer, that President Obama is increasingly unpopular is going to have to work hard to secure a second term, but you only have to look at the alternative to see that he’s in no such danger right now.

Graham Linehan

I know I’ve said I don’t do talking about electoral reform, but this from The Guardian just takes the biscuit:

Ministers, who agreed the move at a meeting of the cabinet’s democratic renewal committee (DRC) yesterday, believe that the prospect of a referendum will have three key benefits. It will:

• Allow Labour to depict itself at the general election as the party of reform in response to the parliamentary expenses scandal.
• Make David Cameron look like a defender of the status quo. The Tories, who are opposed to abolishing the first-past-the-post system, would have to introduce fresh legislation to block the referendum if they win the election.
• Increase the chances that the Liberal Democrats will support Labour – or at least not support the Tories – if no party wins an overall majority at the election, resulting in a hung parliament. The Lib Dems have traditionally regarded the introduction of PR as their key demand in any coalition negotiations. While AV does not technically count as PR, many Lib Dems regard AV as a step in the right direction.

Here’s a Spinglish->English translation of those three benefits:

• It might make us look good in the papers.
• It might make David Cameron look bad in the papers.
• It might make the Lib Dems like us.

Seriously. I believe this is exactly the sort of thing I was saying yesterday we need to learn to ignore entirely. Anyone out there who has some kind of genuine belief in the benefits of electoral reform would be wise to stay well back from whatever it is these schemers are playing at.

- – -

“And in these uncertain times, we must be, we will be, the rock of stability and fairness upon which people stand.”
     – Gordon Brown, September 2008

“Now we also know that these are uncertain times, there are challenges ahead. The global economy is facing its biggest test in more than a decade. It demonstrates so clearly that, yes, there are huge opportunities from globalisation – but there are big challenges too. Especially today.”
     – Alistair Darling, February 6^th 2008

“I would venture that, in these uncertain times, it is even more important for people everywhere to come and learn about the work and the principles of the United Nations.”
     – Kofi Annan, November 7^th 2002

“It can never be more appropriate for this country to take on such responsibility than in times of uncertainty and doubt; sticking firmly to principles of freedom and inclusion, and eschewing protectionism and isolation.”
     – William Hague, February 4^th 2009

‘In these uncertain times’? What these times are uncertain about is, usually, left to the imagination of the audience. It’s also unclear why these times are less certain than times gone by – as any good weather forecaster would attest, making predictions always involves a degree of uncertainty. The intended message of this phrase is that where once the speaker was blessed with the ability to forsee the future, their confidence in the inevitability of events-to-be has now departed.

The purpose is clear: to make the listener feel uncertain, doubtful and ever so slightly fearful about the future. The listener, in this anxious state, becomes a little more open to whatever course of action the Spinglish speaker proposes to reduce that uncertainty. In this way it is much like the phrase ‘desperate times call for desperate measures’ – a call to consider outlandish actions which would be rejected were the times ‘more certain’.

Whilst this may seem to make the phrase a fairly dangerous one, in all the above examples the intended action is also rendered in pure Spinglish: becoming a ‘rock of stability and fairness’; facing up to unspecified ‘big challenges’; learning about ‘the work and the principles of the United Nations’. In each case, the Spinglish is used in order to justify further use of Spinglish – a marvellous feature of this unique and beautiful language which allows a speaker to continue for many minutes without actually saying anything at all.

So, ‘these uncertain times’ may be a phrase to watch out for, but it is still most often used innocuously. If ever you come across it in the wild, we recommend you inform the speaker that if the times are so uncertain to them, perhaps it is time they invested in a watch.

Well, as everyone knows, the way to Get Involved is to join a political party and start spreading the message! Off you go, start researching the parties and decide which one you want to join. It’ll be fun!

Of course, you’re going run across a problem. You’re going to discover, in short, that there isn’t actually a single political party worth the membership fee.

You can’t join Labour, you see, because you’ve seen what happens after 12 years of rule by people with their hearts in the right place but their heads firmly stuck in the crazy bucket. You can’t join the Conservatives because you’re not a millionaire and you don’t eat babies or get your moral outlook from a bloke in a dress and his imaginary friend. The Lib Dems look mildly tempting for a little while until you notice that they all bring homemade cupcakes with them to meetings and sing songs round campfires well into middle age. So that’s the main ones taken care of – who else? The Greens are a bunch of scary bearded sandal-wearing hippies tied to trees. UKIP only really care about one thing and it’s not the one thing that the rest of us really care about. White cloth over the head is very much out this season so the BNP are definitely not an option – and besides, raw egg isn’t that tasty when it’s dripping down your face. After that, what are you left with? The Socialist Workers Party? The Libertarian Party? This started off with you wanting to Make A Difference, not become an evil dork! You’re not about to spend the rest of your life ranting on the internet/muttering in dark smoky rooms¹ about the authoritarian/bourgeoisie¹ conspiracy that’s out to subvert the sheeple who are slumbering to their doom.

And the overriding feeling from the lot of them is that they aren’t really out to make a difference – they’re out to make a war. They want to make a statement, or spread a message. They want to get one over the other guys.

It’s very easy to diagnose this problem. God knows I’ve said it before, the perpetually irritated one outlined much the same thing rather brilliantly just this morning, and the concept formed the backbone of the best episode of The Thick Of It so far². As with all things, though, offering solutions is a much harder task than defining problems.

So, here’s my idea: how about we all start just ignoring the various political parties wherever we can. Forget about their self-aggrandising, shrug off their ridiculously overblown accusations about their opponents. Ignore their posturing and their blatant vote-grabs.

Instead, let’s start treating them like religious bodies – for the similarities are indeed quite striking. Like religions, their importance depends entirely on us believing in their importance; like religions their strength is drawn from the unity and zealotry of their members and supporters; like religions they regularly condemn and attempt to suppress those who choose not to follow their ideals and ideologies. Like religions, they have been faced with an ever-increasing irrelevance in the modern world, and like religions their response has not been to accept this fact or work to make themselves more relevant, but instead to grow more zealous and more self-assured, to protest and assure us that they are extremely important, and to make dire warnings about what might happen if they were allowed to die away.

Most of us have learned to take this sort of behaviour from an Archbishop or senior Rabbi with a knowing roll of the eyes and a cluck of the tongue. So why have we not figured out how to do the same when politicians start explaining how much belief they have in the party system, or how important it is that people Get Involved in party politics?

Let’s start treating them like the religions that they are – and let’s start recognising that there’s a whole lot of value in being an atheist.

PS: At the precise moment my fingers were hovering above the ‘publish post’ keystroke, I was distracted by this tweet which lead to this blog post about games machines and political parties which renewed a little of my faith in the world. Go read it.

1. [delete as appropriate]
2. Confession: I’m kind of new to The Thick of It – but that episode was so good that I forced it upon my long-suffering wife, who also agreed it was fantastic, having never watched the series before.

You would? Excellent! OK, I’ll get you your chocolate bar. That’s a promise.

Actually, hang on a minute. Instead of a chocolate bar, would you rather have a box of Quality Street? I mean, there’s a lot more chocolate in it, and far more variety… OK, we’ll forget the chocolate bar, then. I’ll get you a box of Quality Street.

Mmmm. Doesn’t your mouth just water at the thought of those choccies.

Hang on, you really don’t want a box of Quality Street, do you. You’d just get sick if you ate that much chocolate – and anyway it’ll make you fat. Don’t worry about it – we won’t bother with any chocolate. Silly idea, really. I don’t know what possessed me to make the offer, really. I mean, one chocolate bar probably would have been fine, but a whole box of Quality Street? Sheesh, how greedy are you?!

- – -

So, anyway, apparently the Liberal Democrats have decided no longer to campaign for an ‘in or out’ referendum on the European Union. Or, at least, so says Sir Mezies Campbell:

Sir Menzies told the Daily Politics there was ‘no public appetite’ for a vote since Lisbon Treaty ratification.

Which is funny really, since the Lib Dems were only promising an ‘in or out’ referendum on the EU so that they could justify not giving us a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. So they have:

• Promised a referendum on the EU Constitution in their manifesto at the 2005 election.
• Abstained from the Commons vote which would have secured a referendum on the broadly-similar Lisbon Treaty.
• Justified their abstention on the basis that it would be better to have an ‘in our out’ referendum. And then…

• Quietly dropped their pledge for that ‘in or out’ referendum on the basis that we the people probably don’t really want one anyway, now that it comes to it.

You know what? I’d have been happy enough with the chocolate bar.

There is one phrase which Lib Dems hate hearing; whose mere utterance sends a chill through their very bones and engenders much shuffling of feet and staring at fingernails throughout their ranks. I know that they hate hearing it, but I also know that the reason it stings is that it is so often being proven true. Here it is:

The Lib Dems are just the same as the other two parties.

- – -

Anyway. Sorry. Excuse me, I’m acting all unamused about it this. Forget about the referendums – who cares, after all? Ming’s right – there’s no ‘appetite’ for this stuff. No one’s intersted, really. Talking about Europe is something everybody hates doing anyway.

So, on a slightly lighter note, I thought I’d find out more, so I searched Google for ‘liberal democrat policies’. Would you like to see what I found?

404 Error: We’re sorry, no Liberal Democrat policies could be found.

…And you wonder why everyone thinks the Lib Dems are a joke.

Darren Bridgman

- – -

$ ruby christmas.rb

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
A partridge in a pear tree!

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Five Gold Rings,
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Six Geese a-Laying,
Five Gold Rings,
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Seven Swans a-Swimming,
Six Geese a-Laying,
Five Gold Rings,
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Eight Maids a-Milking,
Seven Swans a-Swimming,
Six Geese a-Laying,
Five Gold Rings,
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Nine Ladys Dancing,
Eight Maids a-Milking,
Seven Swans a-Swimming,
Six Geese a-Laying,
Five Gold Rings,
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Ten Lords a-Leaping,
Nine Ladys Dancing,
Eight Maids a-Milking,
Seven Swans a-Swimming,
Six Geese a-Laying,
Five Gold Rings,
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Eleven Pipers Piping,
Ten Lords a-Leaping,
Nine Ladys Dancing,
Eight Maids a-Milking,
Seven Swans a-Swimming,
Six Geese a-Laying,
Five Gold Rings,
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Twelve Drummers Drumming,
Eleven Pipers Piping,
Ten Lords a-Leaping,
Nine Ladys Dancing,
Eight Maids a-Milking,
Seven Swans a-Swimming,
Six Geese a-Laying,
Five Gold Rings,
Four Calling Birds,
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
And a Partridge in a pear tree!

I’ll get me coat…

It’s articles like this one, on the fascist imagery of Starship Troopers and why it’s harder to deal with than that of Robocop, that make me love reading Overthinking It so much. A difficult-to-choose excerpt:

It wouldn’t be fascist satire unless we were supposed to cheer for the characters — regardless of what they did. In a good bit of fascist propaganda, like Triumph of the Will or Starship Troopers, what makes the heroes heroic is the color of their uniform and their ability to channel rage in the service of the Nation. That’s it.

So the critics were right and they still got it wrong. Starship Troopers is fascist propaganda — for a fascism that does not yet exist. The problem isn’t that Verhoeven got his fascist propaganda all over your action movie. The problem is that your action movie springs directly from fascist propaganda.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to abolish the proposed law that will see alleged illegal filesharers disconnected from their broadband connections, without a fair trial.

I signed it. Although, I worry that Fraser Spears may be right.

From the BBC:

Let me tell you the story of a classic Whitehall farce, a tale of how the government came within a whisker of advocating bovine genocide.

This reads like an episode of Yes, Minister

Unenlightened Comentary

Graham Linehan reposted this comment from the Boing Boing thread on the ‘pirate finder general’. It’s pretty well done. Here’s the first verse:

I am the very model of a Pirate Finder General
My remit runs from a to z, from animal to mineral
The government has issued me with pow’rs plenipotentiary
To seize you and to pack you off to any penitentiary

YouTube, anyone?

Cool retro iPhone game (sort of a Pac Man clone) built entirely using javascript by Nevn Mrgan. The really interesting thing is the decision to make the game as a web app, rather than going through the App Store like most iPhone apps do. He’s written a post explaining his decision here.

Also, it’s pretty fun.

Alarming statistical evidence here on the dangers of bread. For instance:

More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.

And, conversely:

Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.

There needs to be a campaign to spread awareness of the danger bread poses to society. What’s more, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that bread contained significant levels of Dihydrogen Monoxide.

It’s sick, what these big corporations will do in the name of profit.

You surely know the drill by now – the House of Comments Podcast, a ‘brief’ rundown of the news ‘this week’¹ by Mark Reckons and I with special guests. This week we had Charlotte Gore and Constantly Furious, both of whom were genuinely great and both of whom I hope are up for coming on again in the future.

Here’s the show notes, complete with links to many of the sites and posts we mentioned:

Charlotte Gore and Constantly Furious join us this week on the House of Comments Podcast to talk about some of the UK political blogosphere’s biggest stories over the past week.

Download the MP3 file, Subscribe using iTunes or listen using the player below.

We chatted about the possibility of a hung parliament, in light of a poll with the Tory lead down to only 6%, and ask what that could mean for the Lib Dems.

Lord Mandelson’s ‘Three Strikes’ policy for cutting off illegal file-sharers and cracking down on ‘cyberlockers’ is still making waves, as is the manner in which he has used statutory instruments to push the legislation through. What problem is he trying to solve, and will his plans do anything to solve it?

Paul Clarke handed in a shotgun at his local police station and now faces a possible 5 year jail sentence. Constantly Furious was pretty angry about this, whilst Jack of Kent had the most detailed account of the story.

The new Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Baroness Buscombe, has been quoted as saying she’s interested in regulating the blogosphere, a prospect many bloggers are not happy about. We blow her a collective raspberry.

Enjoy!

1. The last two weeks this time – we had to cancel last week’s at short notice due to Mark being asked to appear on Sky News

I accidentally VNC’ed into the computer I was already using. And in that moment I saw God.

Made me laugh, at least.

I was going to explain how the posts on this blog that I consider to be my best, like The Encounter or A Small Victory, were when I was writing something entirely different, and much more personal. I thought I might mention Merlin Mann’s wonderful piece about ‘making the clackity noise’; his assertion that the only way to write well is just to write and keep writing, not worrying about what it is you’re saying exactly, until you’ve finished your story and you’ve said what you meant.

I was going to pull this section out and quote it:

Your keyboard will have different things in it than mine does, of course. But, it’s impossible to know what’s in there until you’ve made the clackity noise for a few minutes. You think you know what’s in there. But you don’t. It’s not your brain that makes the clackity noise, it’s your fingers.

…

Your brain’s a piece-of-shit writer. I know this, because mine is too. So, let me assure you that there’s no point in waiting for your brain to start making the clackity noise for you. It can’t. That’s all on you, and on me, and on each of our extant fingers.

My intention was not to suggest I wouldn’t be writing about politics any more, but just to try and get across how hard it is to stay enthusiastic enough about a subject that is so regularly so frustrating, and ultimately so frivolous. That when I start writing a post I always have a moment where I wince and wish I was one of those creative people who can swap some words round and turn a single thought into a story.

I had all these good intentions, but life got in the way. I didn’t make the clackity noise. I couldn’t tell you now if it was the smell of freshly cooked chilli or the call of my daughter in need of a bedtime cuddle, or even just the allure of an evening spent laid out on the sofa with my wife watching movies, but there was something more important to me at that moment than getting my thoughts written down, and it drew me away.

But between then and now, Blue Eyes apparently came to almost exactly the same viewpoint as I, but he sat down and wrote the words I had failed to put down. Even worse, he summed up the bulk of my sentiment so perfectly, so beautifully, so disarmingly concisely, that my entire planned post was rendered utterly obsolete, because all anybody really needed to say was:

I will write about whatever I damned-well fancy

Thank you Blue Eyes, for a fantastic post. But damn you all the same, for getting there first.

Fascinated to read this on the front page of the BBC News site today:

Children under the age of five are to be the next in line to get the swine flu vaccine, the government has announced. The immunisation programme is already well under way, with NHS workers, pregnant women and people with health problems being offered the jab first.

Fascinating, because I have a pregnant wife and a 3 year old daughter, neither of whom have been given or even offered swine flu jabs. When my wife contacted the doctor to ask about them she was told they didn’t have enough doses and they were currently prioritising children – so despite the pregnancy she was unlikely to be vaccinated on the NHS this side of Christmas.

Nich Starling at Norfolk Blogger has written a fair amount on DoH’s botched handling of the swine flu vaccinations over the past few months. If I’m honest, I’ve been following a strict policy of not being worried about swine ‘flu, but being told that the programme is ‘well under way’ and is being extended seems incongruous at best.

Anyone know anybody who’s had vaccinations on the NHS yet?

The attitude of The Times towards blogs is starting to get utterly disgraceful. We knew this ages ago, of course, with their ‘outing’ of anonymous bloggers Girl With A One Track Mind and NightJack, which was pointlessly nasty and mean spirited (although at least partially defendable). Now, though, they’ve crossed another boundary and ripped off the whole of Edgar Wright’s tribute to Edward Woodward, edited it to take out all of the good bits, and then reprinted it without permission or approval.

And this is the paper that Rupert Murdoch thinks is so good the whole internet should pay for the privilege of reading it?

Anyway, the best take on this comes from Empire Magazine’s Twitter account:

So while Rupert Murdoch’s accusing the internet of stealing his content, he’s stealing yours from the internet. Way to go, Rupe

Yes indeed. Way to go.

University life often comes as a shock to the privileged sons of this country. Higher education is the time in their lives when young men are most likely to experience minority status; […] At university, unlike in other environments, straight, white young men cannot pretend that they represent the standard for normal humanity.

…

Many have opposed the motion to appoint a ‘Straight White Men’s Officer,’ pointing out that white, straight males do not face discrimination on the grounds of race, sexuality or gender – and that to suggest they do marginalises the experiences of oppressed groups.

…

At SOAS, straight, white young men are confronted with their status as a minority group, albeit a privileged one, in every classroom and hallway. That white, straight males are finally recognising themselves as the minority group they have always been in reality is a positive development, and the appointment of officers to oversee this difficult process of recognition could well help the white, straight young men of today identify and position themselves in solidarity with women, queer people and other minorities.

…

The needs of straight, white males are different to the needs of other minority groups, and should be treated as such. But being born a privileged son does not mean that one deserves to be denied support in the process of finding and exploring one’s identity, especially as growing up white, straight and male in Britain today is so often a confusing and painful experience.

…

Today’s white, straight men too often mistake the work that equality activists do to oppose the worst consequences of white, male, heteronormative privilege as active discrimination against themselves as individuals. Attacks on unearned privilege are not the same as discrimination, nor are they something which any ‘Straight White Men’s Officer’ should waste his time opposing.

…

Instead, such an officer would best serve his community by helping students explore positive ways of expressing a straight, white, masculine identity in a society thoroughly sick of being dominated by straight, white males.

…

With a little imagination, it could well end up training the next generation of white, straight young men – struggling to find their place in a world that orders them to dominate and then blames them for doing so – in the arts of listening, sharing and solidarity.

You know what? I think I’m just going to keep my mouth shut.

The “Googlewhack tripwire” was a truly inspired idea.

Craig Elder

Sara Bedford takes a critical eye to Labour’s latest Party Political Broadcast. In style. It’s a joy to behold. Go read.

Also, is it just me or is Labour’s video absolutely ripping off Apple’s ‘Think Different’ adverts from 1997?

Paul Walter on Liberal Burblings has dug up this gem from the Home Office guidance to police on Firearms law:

Anyone surrendering an illegally held firearm should be questioned discreetly with a view to establishing its history but, unless circumstances exist to give serious cause for concern as to its provenance (for example, if it appears to have been stolen), the person handing it in should not be pressed.

So we come back to the same point that’s been most perplexing from the beginning – why was Paul Clarke arrested in the first place? It now appears to have been a clear breach of Home Office guidelines, unless there’s some more to this somewhere.

See Also: Charlotte Gore.

On a totally unrelated note, does anyone know if Chief Superintendent Adrian Harper who Paul Clarke met with before being arrested is the same Chief Superintendent Adrian Harper who was suspended for alleged dishonest conduct in May 2009?

Now, when I commented on this story (I actually originally left my comment on Jennie Rigg’s blog post and then adapted it for this blog) I made pains to point out that in the eyes of our criminal justice system Paul Clarke had, in fact, done something wrong. That thing being to break the law by walking around with an unlicensed firearm. Now, we can argue the whithertos and the whyfores of the law itself all we like, but currently that is the law and we generally expect that when people break the law (or at least are caught breaking the law) they are punished for it.

I seem to have upset (or perhaps disappointed) a few people with that take on the matter – and not people I’m particularly pleased to have upset, it must be said. Charlotte, apparently, stared “open mouthed and incredulous” at my take at my post, whilst the great Devil’s Kitchen, though very kindly describing me as “normally sensible”, said my post was “wrong at a fundamental level”. Constantly Furious, who has somewhat led the charge on this issue, characterised my position (unfairly, I feel) as suggesting that what happened to Paul Clarke ‘served him right’. Al Jahom said in the comments on my post: “it worries me that people with such a casual attitude towards this sort of outrageous totalitarianism even exist in the UK.”

That’s a flavour – there’s been a few others saying similar things.

Well, maybe they’re all right. It’s possible that I may have gone completely off my trolley with my assertion that breaking a law which is as strict and clear as the gun laws in this country is probably not a good idea. There’s certainly been some objection to the flowery language² of my post, which is undeniably justified, and in retrospect I probably shouldn’t have written “I don’t see what the outrage is about” since there is plenty of reason to be unhappy about this case, just not for any of the reasons which the blog posts I had read at the time focussed on. It may be that this incident truly does demonstrate the totalitarian nature of our society, and provides damning evidence that we are sleepwalking, sawn-off shotguns in hand, into a world of servitude and oppression. But I’m not so entirely sure of that just yet, and I’m still not convinced this story demonstrates anything more than the boring, unflinching, bureaucratic, dull, grey, rubber-stamping, uncaring, un-nuanced nature of our criminal justice system. That is, of course, bad enough in itself, but reams of paperwork wasn’t exactly what Orwell was warning us about. Perhaps it’s just that I’m so used to it everywhere else by now, but I really can’t seem to find it newly shocking, or indeed particularly surprising.

First of all, though, things we all most definitely appear to agree about: Paul Clarke doesn’t deserve to go to prison for five years. It doesn’t serve him right. In fact, Paul Clarke should almost definitely not have been arrested in the first place (more on that later). The law concerning possession of firearms should not be one that cannot be legally defended against – no law should be indefensible. Minimum sentences should not be imposed on judges, because in cases exactly like these we should always have some recourse by which the judge is allowed to use his or her judgement. This case is certainly yet another example of the myriad problems with the way our justice system works.

So. Where we disagree. Well, apart from the fact that I think it’s perfectly bloody obvious that there’s no totalitarian undercurrent to this affair (except, possibly, to a mind trained to see a totalitarian undercurrent to pretty much everything) I think the main point of disagreement is that my fellow bloggers seem to think the judge and jury in this case have done something wrong, whilst I think, respectfully, that that’s a load of dingo’s kidneys.

So far as I can tell, from the moment the Superintendent decided to arrest Mr Clarke everything that has happened, happened because it was supposed to happen. It happened, in fact, because that is exactly what needs to happen. These are the very systems we rely on to maintain the law. The police, after all, are there to uphold and maintain the law, as passed by the members of parliament (themselves elected by the people). The judges are there to interpret the law in individual cases, and juries are there to determine whether or not an accused party has committed the crimes they are charged with.

So, put yourself in the position of a juror. You’re on the jury in the Paul Clarke case. You have been given the evidence of what has happened and you have been asked a very simple question, to which you must answer either yes or no. The question is: was Paul Clarke carrying an unlicensed firearm?

What’s your answer? Was he or wasn’t he? Yes, or no?

I don’t know about you, but from everything I’ve read on this, I’m fairly certain he was. Guilty, your honour.

Now, as I said above, you can argue, and I would, that it’s a stupid law. You can argue that in sentencing this man a very large level of lenience ought to be shown – and I would happily make that argument too. You can argue that the case probably never should have been taken so far as to have ended up with a jury, and you know what? I’d probably agree with you. But what you can’t say, what would be absolutely inaccurate, is that he wasn’t carrying an unlicensed firearm. He was.

To put this point of view into a slightly clearer perspective, here’s a thought experiment: imagine, for the sake of argument, that on the way to the police station Paul Clarke had stopped by a bank. Perhaps he needed to make a transaction that day, and he knew he was going to be in town, so he killed two birds with one cliché, and stopped along the way. It’s not entirely implausible – for all we know, he could have done exactly that.

Now, image that whilst in the bank a security guard had discovered that Paul Clarke was carrying a sawn-off shotgun. And that, upon making this discovery, the security guard had notified the police and had Paul Clarke arrested. What would this story have looked like then?

We know, after all, that Paul Clarke’s intentions were honourable, and that he was on his way to the police station to hand the gun in. He would definitely insist as much, and could even cite his appointment with the Superintendent, which is bound to have been noted in the Superintendent’s diary, as evidence of his good intent. But, in that situation, who would have complained about him being found guilty of possession of a firearm?

The difference between that situation and the one which occurred is essentially one of semantics and location – there was evidence of his intent to hand in the weapon either way, after all. But I’m willing to bet there would have been a whole lot less outcry when he was found guilty of possessing an unlicensed weapon.

- – -

OK, that’s the main focus of this post over – defending my little contrarian corner against such a backlash as I have not seen in quite some time. Let’s move on to some other interesting things to have come out of this case.

First off, why the hell was Paul Clarke arrested in the first place? That seems to be the strangest point about the entire case. To get arrested whilst calmly having a meeting with a Superintendent would surely require something extraordinary to happen. It is, of course, possible that the Superintendent is just a complete idiot, or that was having a bad day and the sight of a shotgun sent him into a fit of madness, but I rather like the neatness of a possible explanation from Pavlov’s Cat which came to me via JuliaM:

In 2008 a man named Paul Clarke (26) of Wood Street, Merstham is found Not Guilty of assaulting a member of the Stasi / sorry DVLA after finding him suspiciously checking out vehicles in his street.

FLASH FORWARD 2009

In 2009 a man named Paul Clarke (now 27) now of Nailsworth Crescent, Merstham, (I guess he didn’t move far) is found Guilty of possession of a firearm he found in his back garden, that he subsequently handed into the police and faces 5 years in prison.

I don’t think it’s coincidence.

You know, I’m not sure it is either. So maybe what we’re looking at here is actually a somewhat vindictive police Superintendent who was unhappy with Mr Clarke for having got off a previous charge, seeing an opportunity to get back at him present itself when Mr Clarke walked into his office and produced a shotgun. From there the story takes on a life of its own.

To me, it sounds at least plausible, and slots in an extra piece of the puzzle. Even if it was a stupid and vindictive decision to arrest him, at least it’s only the same sort of stupidity and vindictiveness you seem to see everywhere in human interactions where one party has some degree of power over the other.

- – -

Lastly, what about the law? Many people have rightly made the point to me that breaking the law in and of itself is not doing something morally wrong, if in breaking the law you do not cause harm to others. That’s as may be, but it doesn’t make it any less breaking the law. And the courts are there to determine whether or not laws have been broken. The argument that somehow the law is only the law if it’s a law that we like is basically saying that Paul Clarke’s only crime was to, erm, commit a crime. How shocking that I then would have the audacity to suggest that this would make him a criminal.

Here’s the thing: what’s the point in having laws if we’re not going to expect people to follow them? And if the law is not being enforced, at what point does the law become ‘whatever I decide is not causing harm’? Why bother having police and judges and juries and indeed lawmakers if their decisions have no bearing upon our actions?

I have a lot of sympathy for those who disagree with that. I am, I admit, not being entirely consistent with my previously stated opinions. I have in the past made the opposite argument in relation to copyright law – that the law is really only what society says the law is, and so if society breaks the law in sufficient numbers it isn’t really the law any more. That when a single person breaks the law we call it a crime, but when 7 million people break the law? We call that a revolution.

But that’s not really the world we live in, and with the best will in the world it’s hard to see how, with the laws we currently have, Paul Clarke’s arrest could have lead to anything other than exactly what has happened.

It may be that only a horribly faceless bureaucratic machine could rubber stamp a conviction like this with no legal defence, and only an even worse one could pass sentences which cannot be reduced by a judge no matter what the intentions of the criminal. If this brings a literary reference to my mind, though, it isn’t Nineteen Eighty-Four but The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and its marvellous description of New Labour the Vogons:

They are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public enquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

Please, though, let’s not take the Vogon analogy too far. I’d rather not have to imagine the kind of poetry Jack Straw would write.

1. This point fascinates me – presumably he can’t have mentioned this. Had he mentioned he was bringing a gun in, either the Superintendent would have told him not to and thus the situation would have been averted, or the Superintendent told him to break the law, which I believe would be entrapment.

   UPDATE: Turns out Paul Clarke did not tell the Superintendent that he was bringing in a weapon. Via Constantly Furious, the court reporter who covered the Paul Clarke trial has said over Twitter “[Paul Clarke] didn’t tell police he had a gun. He said: ‘I’ve got something to give you’. He admits that was mistake but didn’t know the law”. In that case it’s worth remembering the mantra of the blogosphere during the expenses crisis – Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

2. I’ll be honest, I was quietly proud of the Errol Flynn line until DK so ruthlessly mocked it.

Lots of people seem unhappy about this story of a fellow called Paul Clarke walking into a police station to hand in a shotgun he found in his garden. He was promptly arrested for possession of an unlicensed firearm and is now facing a prison sentence.

Thing is, I don’t see what the outrage is about. If you find a weapon in your garden, the correct thing to do is surely to leave it alone, call the police, and let them come and collect the weapon. Not to go traipsing down to the local police station and produce a shotgun in front of the startled receptionist with an Errol Flynn style flick of the wrist.

Besides, what kind of idiot discovers that a shotgun has been thrown into his garden – most likely being disposed of by a criminal – and goes and picks it up? Has he really never heard of fingerprinting?

(The above is largely based on a comment I left on Jennie’s post)

UPDATE: I’ve written some more on this here

Matthew Parris writes to his younger self.

Still-in-alpha site which gives graphical overviews of Government spending data going back 5 years or so. Interesting to muck about with. There’s a bit more info about where they see the project going from the ‘About’ page:

Users of the service would be able to see where their own money is spent or where it comes from, as well as where money across government is spent and where it comes from. Existing government transparency would be built upon to help citizens discover their own part in government economic activity — thereby encouraging them to take a more active interest in, and a more thoroughly informed engagement with, the official institutions around them.

Craig Elder

Scientists at Glasgow University say they have proved a long-standing hypothesis of politics, following the culmination of a long-running experiment last night.

In an article to be published in scientific journal The Wonk’s Gazette, the research team claim that they have proved beyond reasonable doubt that voting Labour is not an intellectual decision.

Dungeekin bringing a whole new meaning to ‘political science’. Do read the whole summary of results…

In fact, so many people asked me my opinion (including the obligatory ‘well alright, if you’re so smart how would you solve the problem’ demands) that I nearly wrote a blog post about it.

Thankfully, I came to my senses just in time, remembered that it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt (cheers, Abe), and you can be spared my ignorant ramblings about how everything wrong with our lives can be solved with just one minor change to our political system. You know, because the world really is that simple, and politics has so much effect on our lives, and in the history of this country there has never been anyone quite as smart as I am, who has already thought of my idea. And there absolutely couldn’t be anything I hadn’t thought of which would really screw it up…

So, be thankful for the small mercies.

To me, you see, politics is the ultimate meta activity. Politics is pretty much never about making the world a better place, but instead is about talking – no, arguing – about what the best way to make the world a better place might possibly be. Actually, even more accurately, politics is arguing about why the other team’s ideas are the wrong way to do it. It’s no coincidence that we’ve created the term ‘office politics’ to mean ‘everything that happens at work which doesn’t involve, you know, working‘

Really, can you think of anything more pointless than talking about politics?

Oh yeah, OK, yep, you got it in one. There is one thing more pointless than talking about politics. Talking about reforming politics. Deciding on the best way to decide how to argue over who’s got the worst idea for making the world a better place. First-Past-The-Posts, Proportional Representations, Single Transferable Votes, Open Primaries, Recall Elections, Multi-Member Constituencies, Direct Elections, Alternative Votes and all those kind of things.

Seriously. Can anyone talk about that stuff without dropping into a trance? Even just the words have a soporific quality to them. My eyelids are drooping just typing them out. I nearly didn’t make it through the end of that last paragraph, if I’m honest. Two more words and my wife would have found me tomorrow morning still laid out across the laptop drooling slightly on the keyboard.

Derren Brown needn’t use mind tricks or misdirection to freeze people to their chairs – he could just announce that he’s going to give a lecture on the benefits of the AV+ system and 90% of the country would be out like a light.

The problem is that reforming an electoral system is much like sorting the recycling from the rubbish. No, better analogy, it’s like re-organising a record collection into chronological order (sub-categorised by record label) – or perhaps (for the hip modern kids like myself) rating every song in an iTunes library out of five stars.

Getting it done would probably make my life easier. It would probably be more efficient. I could probably use those smart playlists to give me really fine-grained control of how much awesome I listen to at any one moment. It’d probably help me when I want to listen to Mowtown vinyls from the 60’s and I can find them all in one place! But I’m a busy guy, and you know what? I’d really rather spend my time listening to the damn music.

And the last thing politics needs is more people who get a kick out of organising their record collections. So on that note, here’s a really nice song. Do enjoy it.

Comparison of Google Suggestions results for ‘more intelligent’ and ‘less intelligent’¹ search queries. There’s an impressive difference.

There’s also an article in Slate about the fun you can have with Google Suggests, and Andrew Hickey spoted a good one this morning…

1. It’s not really ‘intelligence’, of course, it’s grammar and vocabulary, but it’s clearly been made by a grammar snob

Not for the faint-hearted.

I’ve been scathing about ‘Retweeting’ in the past, but Twitter have just introduced an official retweeting system which addresses many of the issues I have with the practice. Evan Williams (@ev), one of Twitter’s founders, has written a fantastic and detailed explanation of what the new Retweeting system is, and even more crucially what it isn’t.

He’s exactly right about a lot of the things I don’t like about retweeting – the lack of clear attribution in retweets, the scores of different syntaxes for writing a retweet, the massive, noisy redundancy when several people retweet exactly the same thing, the way tweets can be corrupted and altered as they get retweeted, and indeed the fact that retweets (as they were up until today) break the Golden Rule of Twitter – you choose who you follow.

Anyone using Twitter and interested in the thinking behind this potentially massive change to the way its used should go read Ev’s explanation of it.

Now just waiting for atebits to add Retweet support to Tweetie.

An interesting piece on how dull corporate Twitter accounts tend to be, questioning whether the service is really that well suited to business and marketing. I think, though, it’s really based on a misunderstanding about the manner in which social media can help businesses. It points out examples of businesses trying to use Twitter for traditional marketing and failing, but corporate Twitter usage at its best is about connecting customers directly to real people within the company, skipping out the ‘marketing’ entirely.

Every time I get an e-mail, I make wide, swingeing assumptions about the sender — purely based on their e-mail address.

Apparently, I’m marked out as ‘the aristocracy of the internet’. I think I approve.

Blue Eyes does the honours.

Episode 4 of the House of Comments Podcast is up, featuring Jennie Rigg, Matt Wardman and, of course, myself and Mark Thompson. As you can see from the title, we discussed a fairly broad range of stuff this week, and in fact ran well over our allotted half hour (I managed to edit it down to 45 minutes or so). Hope you enjoy it! And, if you do, you should subscribe using iTunes here.

Let me know what you think.

Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a “guaranteed future” one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favors a new war and destruction?

Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labor in our republic to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness?

‘On those leaving the GDR’ – East German propaganda pamphlet

(Via Wikipedia)

If you want to make a donation, you cn do so by clicking on the poppy.

And if you miss it today, it’ll be back on the 11th.

MacHeist do bundles of Mac software at cut prices, usually around Christmas. Typically it will be 12 or so pieces of software for $50, and there’s almost always a few apps in there which make it worthwhile.

This latest ‘nanoBundle’ just came out and consists of 6 Mac Apps, including WriteRoom (which I already use and love), for free!

There’s really no reason not to pick it up.

Lib Dem Voice complain about The Daily Express complaining about ‘Health and Safety’ complaining about bonfire night:

[The Daily Express] rails against “health and safety killjoys” who “have forced a rugby club’s Guy Fawkes revellers to watch a film of a bonfire on television rather than enjoy the real thing.”

Frustratingly for the Express, it turns out that nothing of the sort has happened.  Faced with having to fill in paperwork, supply metal barriers and provide five marshalls to keep a crowd of 2,000 safe, the organisers have decided, in their own words to “come up with an original, imaginative and fun way to fill the void“.

Let me get this straight: faced with having to fill in reams of paperwork and spend large amount of money on safety measures, the rugby club gave up trying to have a bonfire and instead played a video of a bonfire on a large projection screen.

But that’s a completely different thing to saying “health and safety killjoys [force] revellers to watch a film of a bonfire on television rather than enjoy the real thing”. Completely different.

Frustratingly.

Classic Brown:

The Prime Minister is completely focussed on restoring the economy, getting people back to work and improving standards in public services. As the Prime Minister has consistently said, he is determined to build a stronger, fairer, better Britain for all.

The correct response, of course, would have been ‘no’.

Of course, he will only be the Head of the EU Council for so long – presumably the root of the oft-heard assurance that this thing or the other thing will ‘forever change the face of Europe’. Most recently, the terrifying prospect has reared its ugly head² of ‘the face of Europe’ regenerating into this face (or, even worse, this face). Enough to scare kids to sleep.

However, I digress – and before I’d even managed to get started. The focus of the EU story this time round is the question of what exactly David Cameron is going to do about the probability that the Lisbon Treaty will have been ratified before the next general election. This focus is because back in 2007 – facing the prospect of a snap general election and the possibility of actually becoming Prime Minister before the Lisbon Treaty ratification process had been completed – Cameron gave what he called a ‘cast-iron guarantee‘ that his Government, were he allowed to form one, would hold a referendum on the question of whether Britain should sign up to the Lisbon Treaty.

For what it’s worth, I quite honestly believe (as, I think, do most reasonable people) that Mr Cameron meant that promise sincerely. When he gave it, it was indeed a cast-iron guarantee. Had an election been held and the Conservatives returned as the largest party, I think he would definitely have held a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Considering that this is a man who is often criticised by his opponents for supposed insincerity or assumed lack of trustworthiness, I think on this matter he could have really shown his critics up.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, did not follow through with their respective pledges to hold a referendum on further European integration. Labour’s argument was one of specificity – its cornerstone being the assertion that they had only promised a referendum on one particular document, the EU Constitution, and not on any other treaties, constitutions, agreements, settlements, compacts, covenants or other such contractual arrangements the EU may or may not produce in the future. It’s a point of view which is semantically accurate whilst not entirely convincing. You might say they followed the letter of the law, but not the spirit. As it were.

The Lib Dems, on the other hand, took a ‘principled stance’ against their original promise, declaring that democracy would be better served by having no referendum at all than a referendum which, in their eyes, only went half way. This idea, if you twist your face into a funny angle, stand on your head and squint at it, makes some slight degree of sense – an in/out referendum could plausibly have been preferable in the long run, after all. But, having promised in their manifesto to argue for a referendum on further integration, when push came to shove I think it’s fair to say they faltered.

It was all, really, as disappointing as it was predictable.

So now, with the Lisbon Treaty ratified, David Cameron has ended up a little stuck in the mud. Realistically, he has only two options. He can break his ‘cast-iron guarantee’ and leave the Lisbon Treaty ratified without a referendum (with some token attempt at ‘renegotiating our relationship’ with the EU), in the process upsetting a large amount of his party. Alternatively, he could hold a referendum which would effectively decide whether Britain remains part of the EU or not. In the process this could further alienate him from the other EU countries, and put him in something of a lose-lose situation, in the long run.

The juxtaposition here, between the pussyfooting and dishonesty from Labour and the Lib Dems, and what I genuinely think was a sincere and well-meant promise from David Cameron is quite eye-opening. I’ve written before on this same point, but happily Patently Rubbish has written along similar lines with much greater eloquence than I managed:

The only politician who has, throughout, kept to his promise that he would hold a referendum, is David Cameron. Every other party has dropped us in it. What is worse, they have dropped us in it so thoroughly, and so deeply, and so irrevocably, that they now actually dare to criticise Cameron for acknowledging that the promise he made is no longer deliverable.

For those parties, now, to taunt and tease Cameron and make him out to be the dishonest one in this situation, is just disgraceful. It is a showcase of British politics at its lowest, at it’s most venal an crass. All involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

So, I’m afraid I won’t be joining those rushing to do exactly that over this issue. I have to say, I don’t see why sticking to your guns, taking risks and making promises you intend to keep is such a bad attribute for a politician, and I furthermore don’t see how changing your position when things have moved on and it is no longer a sensible position is the mark of a dishonest man.

Cameron’s mistake, and certainly to the political-minded observer he did make one, was his (perhaps naïve) assumption that the other parties would not sell him, and those voters who cared about having a referendum, down the river. He may (as Mick Fealty put it) be ‘wriggling off a hook he should not have landed himself on’, but the fact is that this entire exercise has provided an object lesson in why politicians always seem to lie and sidestep tough questions in the first place. Whenever you give a straight and sincerely meant promise, if events transpire in such a way that you cannot fulfil it (normally known as Murphy’s Law), the mistake is deemed to be yours.

Seriously, how often do you hear people arguing, as Mark Thompson has here³, that politicians should use more caveats, and give themselves more wriggle room in interviews and campaign pledges? Is that a serious suggestion that had Cameron been vaguer and less forthright, it would have been more honourable? That he would not have received any criticism for refusing to make a firm promise?

It certainly sounds like it to me, and if so, I think there’s a word for that.

Hypocrisy.

1. Not to mention my bringing up the matter of him being ‘reared’ by the EU, which sounds just a tad painful to me.
2. Does a prospect have a head? Or would I be better off not asking?
3. UPDATE: For avoidance of confusion, I only linked to Mark’s post mainly because he’s the one I’ve been back-and-forthing with about this subject. He is not the only one to have made this argument, and is far less damning than many others.

He’s put up a little more explanation here, but I really quite like this passage:

Party politics drives me nuts. Telling other people what they have to say, what they should vote for and what they need to think about a certain subject is not something I want to be involved in any more. […] Politics is my hobby, I’m not a career politician and in the future if I decide that I would like to try to become a politician then I’ll decide then what party I stand for.

I’ve said before (somewhere or other) that I think party politics is corrosive and damaging, and I’m very happy to see bloggers move away from it. Good luck, Cardiff Blogger!

A very nice article explaining why ‘file sharing’ is different to ‘piracy’, including this handy cut-out-and-keep guide:

nevali