Monday, March 20, 2006

That's All Right Then

Three years on and Iraq stubbornly refuses to Americanise. How much more do the Americans have to do to convince them that all they really want is hamburgers and Friends?

It's been the longest slow-motion train crash I have ever seen. I vaguely remember the disintegration of the Vietnam adventure when I was younger, but this has been in a class of stupidity all by itself.

It shows how disconnected from reality the Neocons are if they really thought the post-war reorganisation would look after itself. But now the policy isn't to defeat Bin Laden (no link to Iraq ever), not to bring democracy (these middle easterners keep voting for the wrong people...), not even to crush the 'insurgents', but just to stop it becoming another Vietnam.

Too late for that. But this hasn't reached Dubya yet. He's still in his own private, insulated world where it is all going to be OK, surrounded by increasingly hysterical spin doctors and driven by far right groups who actually do think it's going OK.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Smile Please

We now find out the government is planning the use of speed cameras for surveillance outside of simple speeding. So we can't be world number one at many things but at least we can be the most watched society in the world. Makes you feel sort of proud.

I think there are two issues here. The first is plainly the civil rights one. This is partly about revenue collection, of course, but the evolving mindset is that citizens are assets to be tracked, monitored and managed like anthing else. Everything can be justified because the more control the government has, the easier it will be to prevent terrorism. Ha. We are being asked to give up increasing amounts of personal freedom in the cause of defending our right to... ..give up increasing amounts of personal freedom, presumably. As Phill Zimmermann, the originator of PGP once said, the logical consequence of the argument that if you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear, is that we should dispense with envelopes and write all our communications on postcards.

It was so simple in the days of the Cold War. The function of the government was to protect us from the Evil East and their vast, grey armies. Communism, CND, NCCL, Trade Unions - they were all manifestations of the Enemy. This was the only obstacle preventing our governments from delivering the prosperity, joy and freedom inherent in the idea of capitalism.

The second issue is one of language. In a development that would presumably amuse George Orwell, our ability to object to these infringements of personal privacy in a pithy, implication-laden phrase has been eroded. Big Brother no longer implies a brutal, intrusive dictatorship stifling free speech and dissent, but rather a voyeuristic, tacky, ratings-led structured humiliation of the gullible or Z-list celebrities.

Still unpleasant but somehow we have lost something.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Load of Horses

As I mentioned yesterday I drive to work. In the early days this was up through the centre of London (Parliament Square, The Mall, Hyde Park Corner, Edgeware Road, Kilburn...) and latterly through West London (Chelsea Bridge, Embankment, Earls Court, Great West Road...). These are major routes and are quite often heavily congested and on a few occasions quite seriously gridlocked. There are the usual causes: roadworks, accidents, broken down vehicles, traffic light failures - but I was reminded today of a quaint and rather eccentric one: horses.

There are a number of barracks in London and at least some of them obviously have mounted units. The horses need to be exercised, so they need to be ridden through the streets of London to one of the parks for a bit of a workout. This is quite slow, sedate progress - a long column of pairs of horses crossing busy junctions, bringing traffic to a halt, and incidentally dumping bright brown trails of manure through the streets.

What would be a really good time of day to do this?

That's right. Rush hour.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Thought For The Day

I drive to work, and have done for the last twenty years.

During that time I have worked my way through most of the local and national radio stations. I have worked my way through educational tapes (at one time playing the eleven double sided tapes of Chet Karass's Negotiating Skills course several times) and endless music selections. Somehow I always come back to BBC Radio 4. It's not ideal but it has quite a lot going for it: it is human speech (so it engages the brain) but not the frenetic bonhomie and endless competitions of various breakfast shows, there are no adverts, and it is an introduction to the day's news without having to sit down with a paper.

It has some drawbacks though. It is frustrating to listen to an item about a topic which I have some knowledge of or interest in, and hear a couple of 'experts' (likely selected on the basis of their willingness to get up at some awful hour of the morning) introduce, examine and debate a complex subject in about three minutes then, just when it starts to get somewhere, have the presenter cut in with "Well we will have to leave it there..."

It is also tedious to listen to well-briefed and trained politicians ignoring the questions they are being asked and simply rehearsing a prepared text (you listening, Gordon?).

But the major problem is that I am driven to get to work by 7.50 at the latest in order to avoid having to listen to Thought For The Day. Yes I know I can turn it off but that feels like defeat. I know it is going on in the silence, polluting the radio landscape just beyond my hearing.

It is dreadful (with the occasional exception of a half decent thought from the editor of the Sikh Messenger). It is Private Eye's Rev J C Flannel made corporeal. I feel my brain being submerged in a ceaseless tide of meaningless mush. I can feel my eyes glazing over, synapses snapping under the strain of trying to process the meandering ponderings.

I can cope with that.

What I cannot cope with is Anne Atkins. I do not know what it is about this emotionally stunted intellectual pigmy woman that sets my blood pressure soaring. Maybe it is the leaden, amateurish attempts at humour, the clunking sarcasm, or the strangled, bitter bigotry that oozes over the radio waves. Maybe that's normal on her planet, but I find it spoils my whole day. She is a one-woman container of all that is bad and unpleasant about Christianity.

There was a fuss some time ago about whether non-religious people had any thoughts to contribute to the start of the day, and the BBC concluded that they didn't.

The problem is that the religious commentators don't either.