Diana Watch

OK, I think I have to be honest with you. I will not be voting for the Conservative Party at the next General Election. I know that this may come as a surprise to absolutely none of you but I thought that we should clear it up.

 I spend a lot of time on here having a go at Tories and their rubbishness and almost as much time defending the Government. This will stop, the government defending bit anyway (unless they are being unfairly maligned or misrepresented because that is not fair.)

 I feel that, for reasons of fairness, that I should also tell you that I am a member of a Political party and it is neither of the two mentioned above. Yes, my dear readers, I am a member of UKIP. Ha, bet you spluttered what ever drink happened to be in your mouth just then. Bet it’s running down your chin and dripping on to your keyboard right now! Ha. Of course I’m not, I’m a member of the Lib-Dems (oh and as of this week the RSPB).

 You’re not really that surprised are you? I thought I should mention it because as we, in Britain, build up to the Election this blog may get a little more partisan. To be honest it will get a little more partisan but I’m trying to give it a veneer of balance and fairness.

 I won’t be uncritical of my party though just because I am a member, if they do something twatish I will say, but possible not with as much vitriol as I would if it were a Tory issue.

 For instance, there seems to be a plot afoot to remove Evan Harris as the parties’ spokesperson on Science, you can read about at Jon Treadway’s blog here.

 Brilliant, Evan Harris is great. He’s funny and well informed. We need more people like him not fewer. So he pissed off a few on the old woolly side of the party. Fuck ‘em. They are one of the reasons the party has an image problem. People think that we are all just a bunch of Tofu eating, sandal wearing hippies. Are we going to try and get rid of Vince Cable as well because he annoys some bankers?

 Anyway, confession over (now I know how Tiger Woods must have felt. Seriously, talk about taking yourself too seriously. You play golf for a living, calm down. Who cares into what or whom you have inserted your penis. Can you still play golf well? If so then carry on, if not stop, you are worth over $1billion) and now back to Tory Bashing, it’s like whack-a-mole but much, much more fun.

 20 economists have written to last Sunday's Times to say that the Government's handling of the economic recovery is wrong. Are we surprised by this? No, of course we aren't. I would imagine that they were asked to write to the paper by either the paper or the Tories. I can imagine that it isn't that hard to find 20 economists that disagree with the Government. After all it's only 20. and as any economist will tell you that, when compared to say 60million, 20 is a very small number.

 History also tells us that economist know nothing. We've had a recession after all but that’s not all. In 1981 364 economists wrote to Geoffrey Howe to tell him that he was wrong to raise taxes by £4bn. In the letter, Mervyn King (now Governor of the Bank of England), and the Labour peer, Maurice Peston (Robert Peston's Dad) said that Howe's policy had "no basis in economic theory or supporting evidence", and that Britain's "social and political stability" was at risk if the government did not change course.

 The Tories made much of Sunday's letter but they should be a little careful. Hubris people, hubris. After the 1981 letter was written by loads of people who where supposed to know their stuff, exactly the opposite of what they said would happen happened. The Economy started to grow.

 Friday bought another letter from some more economists. Really, shouldn’t they be doing some adding up or something, they seem to have far to much time to write letters. Oh and letters? Who writes letters these days? What is this, the early 20^th Century? This is why we are in so much trouble, they’ll be advising us to invest in the East India Company or Dutch Tulip bulbs soon.

 Anyway, this time 60 of them have written an open letter supporting the Government’s plan to delay spending cuts for a little bit.

 Now I only have A-level Maths and I don't have a degree in Economics but I'm pretty sure that 60 is bigger than 20, about 3 times as much I reckon. So that will be lots more economists say the Government is right and not the Tories. To quote a football chant “Sit down, shut up. Sit down, shut up.”

 Whilst we are talking about Tories and numbers lets have a quick award,

 The Award for Shooting Yourself in the Foot and Showing That You Have No Idea What Is Going On,

 The Tories put out a document as part of their “Broken Britain” smear campaign against not-middle-class-people that claimed that more than half of girls in deprived areas, by the age of 18, were pregnent. The exact number that they used was 54%. If that is true then that is terrible, maybe these Tory types have a point. Of course they don't. The figure was false. The true figure is 5.4%. Was it just a typo? Did they just miss out a decimal point? Well if they did, they did it 3 times in the document so that seems unlikely. Did no one proof read it and question the figures? (I know I can't really criticize others proof reading but hey, I'm not trying to get elected, yet.) 

 You could just brush this off (as I'm sure the Tories will) as just a mistake but what it does show is that the Conservative Party have no idea what is actually going on in Britain. No one who read the document before it was published thought to ask, “Is this very high number correct?” They all assumed that this is what their country folk were like. Are these the people you want making social policy for us all? Well of course you lot don't, you read this but please tell your friends, relatives and complete strangers, the Tories have no idea about other people.

Would you let this woman run your child’s school?

For those who don’t know, this is Goldie Hawn, she is an actress who likes Buddhism. This is qualification enough to run schools under Tory plans announced last Sunday. Parents, charities and companies are to be encouraged to take over failing schools.

 Is that not privatisation? You remember privatisation, trains, power generation, home care, all those things that work really, really well. Oh now wait, I forgot, profit is put ahead of service. That’s how your children should be educated, by the lowest bidder. What could possibly go wrong?

 Shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove, told the Sunday Times that there would be proper inspections of the school and did say that creationism would not be taught even if a church charity took over a school. Can we hold you to that Mr Gove because that is quite a bold claim?

 He also used a very odd phrase when discussing who would be allowed to run the schools. He said that an independent body would be set up to vet all those who applied and “to make sure that extremist organisations, or people who have a dark agenda, are prevented from doing so.". A dark agenda? He does realise the Harry Potter is fiction right?

 The Award for Reasonably Incompetent Secret Service of the Week,

 This must go to Mossad, the Israeli secret service. OK, so state sponsored terrorism isn’t funny but the way this hit was carries out does smack of a Carry On film.

 Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas leader, was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai. It has been assumed by most people, quite reasonably given Mossad’s history, (have you seen the film Munich?) that they carried out the assassination.

 I realize that none of the above is funny but the following is, a bit. They used stolen identities to travel on. The identities of real people. They traveled on passports with these people’s names on them. People who would very quickly be able to prove that they were nowhere near Dubai when Interpol, who seem to have issued an international arrest warrant for these obviously innocent people, come a calling.

 As far as I am aware, and most of my knowledge does come from the BBC television program Spooks, spy types use a false identity or legend. By using real people and then killing someone, they have managed to get themselves an awful lot of attention, usually the opposite of what spies try and do.

 The Israeli Ambassador was called to the Foreign Office and was asked to explain why they did this, to which his reply, after shifting awkwardly in his seat, was. “Ummmm, we didn’t.”

 The problem is we can do nothing. A government spokesman, I forget who now (this is why I would never be able to uncover something like the Watergate cover up, “ummm, someone broke into somewhere and junk.”) said that “We will make the strongest representations to the Israeli Government”. Well what does that mean? When pressed he was unable to answer because they can do nothing.

 Your ID can be stolen by a foreign Secret Service and there is nothing you, or anyone else, can do about it. International law is meaningless if it is unenforceable.

The Award That Will Mean Nothing To You Because You've Just Won An Olympic Medal,

We won a gold! Oh yes, Ladies and Gentlemen (ok, those reading this in Canada and the US are quite use to this) Great Britain has won a gold medal! Amy Williams has been victorious in the Skeleton bob and has become the first Britain to win a solo Gold in 30 years. (If you click here you can see some video on the BBC website.)

 Lets not mention the US and Canada making sour-grapes type complaints about her aerodynamic helmet because they were rejected, and Great Britain won a medal. Oh yes.

Stories that haven't made it this week,

 The pointless but funny story of the week. The BNP has voted to change it's constitution to allow non-white people to join after the threat of legal action from the Equalities commission.

 Is this going to make them less racist? Nope.

We live in a country of unpleasant people (despite the survey a couple of weeks ago that said that we are all more liberal), although why has the BBC focused on woman's attitudes?

 Haikus of the Week,

 We now know what killed

 King Tutankhamen, fear not,

 He is still dead though.

 A Golfer says sorry

To his wife and family,

Gillette are relieved.

In the coming week news,

Simon Singh's appeal against the BCA comes up on Tuesday. For those of you who don't know what the case is about then may I recommend that you read here or here, for more info on Libel reform, try here.

 May I advise you to read the Jack of Kent blog later in the week to find out what happened.

 Good news, I've come to the end. Have a lovely week.

Diana Watch

Ah, how quickly complex international financial problems and banking crises get boiled down to “Blame the foreigners! They are stealing our jobs!” Do we want to run a book on how it takes someone to blame the Jews?
There are very few bad days that start with coming down stairs to be greeted by a headline on the Sunday Times that if Jack Straw’s new plan come to fruition Jeffery Archer could lose his seat in the House of Lords. Ah, it gives you a warm feeling inside. Who would have thought that some of our Lords were corrupt? The problem is not that they are corrupt, although some might see that as a problem, but there is no sanction against them as they are life peers, that’s life peers! For life. No matter what. One of the most significant betrayals of this Labour Government, if you don’t count the introduction of tuition fees, is their half-arsed, half carried out reform of that place. They promised all sorts of things such as a fully or partially elected upper chamber, but only managed to get rid of the Hereditary peers and replace them with people that they liked and wanted to get into the Cabinet and couldn’t wait to get them elected, although as one of them was Peter Mandelson it was unlikely to happen, again.
Whilst we talking about the Lords, a quick mention of my new favourite Lord. He is Lord West of Spithead, surely a made up name, who is the Security and Counter Terrorism Minister. He has said this week “We never used to accept that our foreign policy ever had any effect on terrorism” he then added, “well, that was bollocks.” I’m sorry? What was that? He added “they [the Blair Administration] were very unwilling to have any debate about how our foreign policy impacted on radicalism” oh my, sense is being spoken at last. He also described terrorists as “Bastards”. Oh, good man.

You may remember from last week, although you probably don’t, I had to look it up, that I said that now racism was over, what with the election of Barack Obama and everything, we should now concentrate on sexism. Well this week President Obama signed an equal pay act. Oh yes, I can change the world. Who would have thought that I have the ear of the Leader of the free world? Anything else that anyone wants? I’m sure that we can give it a go.
Now it seems that electing a black man in American politics, it’s gone on in Africa for a while, was such a good idea that now even Republicans (if this was a Simpsons script there would be the Imperial March from Star Wars now) are doing it. Michael Steele has been voted chairman of the Republican Committee. It was said that he was the most moderate of the 5 candidates but as the other 4 were middle aged white Republicans that really isn’t saying very much. He has said that he will “rebrand” the party. Not change it policies. Not shift it’s slightly unpleasant values so that people might consider voting of them again, oh no, rebrand. Make it look all shiny and new without changing the actual content. A rose by any other name would still stink of homophobia, big business interests over that of the individual and the distinct whiff of gun powder that can only come from a recently fired hand gun.
On his web-site he claims that Democrats “are posed to implement increased taxes, excessive spending and” and this is my favourite bit, “fleece our personal freedoms.” I’m sorry? This from the party that bought you the Patriot Act, water boarding and illegal government phone tapping. Oh and increased taxes? I’m pretty sure that the stimulus package that none of your party voted for this week contained quite a few tax cuts for middle and working class families not just the incredibly, and therefore most likely to vote Republican, wealthy.

Slightly sad local news now. A family that was involved in a nasty road accident, which I believe killed several members of the family, have been burgled whilst they recovered in hospital. Now this is awful, don’t get me wrong, and their upset faces were all over the front of the Dorset Echo, our local rag, following the burglary. My question is this; did this same newspaper print their address following the crash? Exactly as it did when my dad was involved in a crash. We opened the paper to find that, without our permission, they had printed our whole address. A local paper in Kent did exactly the same to my Parents-in-law when they inherited some money. Not really a helpful activity I think you’ll find. It puts those in the story at risk of, umm…. oh yes, burglary. But the paper does get 2 stories for the price of 1 I suppose.

I read an interesting Social Attitudes survey in the Guardian this week. The part that really caught my attention was the section on Commitment to work. It grabbed me because it compared the work ethics of countries with high levels of benefits to those with low. The results were very interesting because they found that in countries with high benefits, such as Norway and Sweden, there is a really strong work ethic but countries with low benefits, such as New Zealand, Australia and GREAT BRITAIN, have a very low commitment to work. So not only are we not really committed to work and if you’ve ever been served in a British shop or restaurant you’ll know that to be true, but we are considered to have low levels of benefits. I’m assuming that this survey did not appear in most British tabloids who all seem to think that the worlds repressed come here because we are giving away the nations wealth to anyone who wants it.
I suppose that, in a way, we are but you have to be a bank to qualify. Nice link don’t you think. I don’t really won’t to criticise Gordon Brown’s handling of the economy because these thing do take time but it does seem that he is using the plan of trickle down economics, by only giving money to the banks, as put forward by such people as Milton Freidman. The plan is you help a few at the top get really, really, offensively rich and then they will spend etc and their wealth will trickle down through the economy until it comes to rest at the bottom. The problem is that he is trying it 20 years after it has been shown that it doesn’t work. The money goes to the top, say, 5 to 10% and they spend it. But the companies with which they spend are owned by them and their friends. The money just goes round and round. The money doesn’t trickle down because workers wages are keep as low as possible to make more money for share holders, who are mostly banks, pension funds and really, really wealthy people.
One of the problems that Gordon Brown has that the people he asks for advice are economists and economists are one of those groups of people who all think differently and have their own brilliant solutions to the problem if only we would implement theirs. Sit 10 economists in a room and ask them all the same question and you will get 15 different answers and that will only be from 6 of them. 2 of them will be hedging their ideas and betting against the others and themselves and the other 2 will be trying to work out how to divide up the opinions of the others into tiny bits in order to sell them to banks, pension funds and each other. All at a massive profit. Until someone defaults on their opinion and it all comes crashing down around them. It still won’t be their fault though.

And so to the weekly fun that is the Awards. I’m told that we are in “awards season”; I’m not really sure what that means. Is it like grouse season? Can I go out and shoot wild awards? Anyway,

The Award for Fantastically Descriptive Acronym of the Week,

This goes to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons or BAAPS. Enough said I think.

The Award for Best Made Up Medical Condition of the Week,

Ladies and Gentleman, pray silence for Cello Scrotum. It has come out this week that a letter to the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 1974 about a condition called cello scrotum was a hoax. The person who wrote the letter, who was a GP at the time, now sits in the House of Lords, Baroness someone or other, did so in response to another letter, which she was convinced was also a hoax, about Guitar player’s nipple. The condition was said to only affect man who played the cello, although you probably could have worked that out from its name. It seems, however, that some did take it seriously as it has been referenced in several articles since. Good work I say.

The Award for Tossers of the Week,

The Naturalist (not naturist, that’s a very different thing), all-round lovely bloke and most people’s fantasy Granddad, David Attenborough has revealed this week that he gets hate mail form people because he fails to credit god in his programs. He said “they tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.” It’s a god of love that they believe in is it?

Well I’m off to watch Mr Attenborough’s new program on Darwin and Evolution at 9 o’clock on BBC 1, have a good week.