spiritof76

On Comment is Free today....Don't listen to Sarah Palin's advice about climate science.

Next to come...?

Don't listen to Gordon Brown's advice about charisma and wit.


Don't listen to Tiger Woods' advice about safe driving.


Don't listen to Davina McCall's advice about molecular nanotechnology.


I'm sure we could come up with more of these. Submit your own versions in the comments thread.

Clear proof that climate change denial is a load of cobblers: Sarah Palin has embraced it.

I'd been thinking earlier that climate change denial is basically creationism for people who think they're too clever and educated to believe in silly things like creationism. But then Sarah Palin probably does believe in creationism, so I may have to rethink that particular epithet.

They've published Sarah Palin's rant against the "radical environmental movement" (translation: the entire scientific discipline of climatology) on Comment is Free, for the CiF commenters to digest and give their thoughts on. The words "fish" and "barrel" spring to mind.

I'm enjoying the comments thread that follows Palin's article. A few excerpts:


In testing times like these - I always ask myself - What would Sarah Palin do?

++++++++

I have to admit I'm a bit of a climate sceptic but with Palin on the sceptical side I'm inclined towards believing.

++++++++

You are Tina Fey and I claim my £10.

++++++++

Hmm who to trust on science, an idiot who has spoken up in favour of creationism or just about every major scientist out there...........


Etc

On today's Comment is Free, the Beatrix Campbell Award for Total Lack of Self-Awareness goes to...well, Beatrix Campbell, explaining why she's converted from Communism to the Green Party.

I mean, seriously, who writes a paragraph like this?

Macho, manic productionism relies on force, it valorises conquest of nature and other humans. It marginalises the means of reproduction – how societies sustain themselves, breathe, give birth, grow and rest, clean up; how people take care, give pleasure and co-operate.

Beatrix, you wrote that, and made our poor brains hurt by having to read it! Why do you hate us so by torturing us with bad theorising?

Also from her article:

I remained a communist until 1989, when it was all over. I was part of the anti-Stalinist, Euro-communist wing. We were clever, caused trouble, caught the imagination, but we lost. Or maybe we failed.

No Beatrix, you weren't clever, didn't cause trouble, didn't catch the imagination, but you did lose and you did fail.

But Beatrix, what were you believing in between 1989 and 2009? Oh yeah, satanic ritual child abuse, which did enormous damage to childrens services and was so mad even the Daily Mail refused to believe in it.

I'm an environmentalist who attends climate change protests. Beatrix, for the sake of the planet, please please please get the fuck off my side. I think this is what people talk about when they say that climate change is too important an issue to be left to the kind of sentimentalised bubbleheads who infest the Green Party.

Still, if any of you live in Hampstead and Kilburn, you have the opportunity to vote for Beatrix Campbell as your Green Party candidate. Lucky you, eh?

Thought for the day: "If you claim to be an admirer of Ayn Rand, then this is clear and conclusive evidence that you're a prick."

Discuss, using arguments and counter-arguments to the above hypothesis.


For a longer elaboration of the hypothesis, see this Comment is Free article..

Lately, many attendees of what they like to call "tea parties" have worn their support for libertarian novelist Ayn Rand on their sleeves, chests and trousers. Yet, as many have recently pointed out, Rand's philosophy of doing whatever is good for you and ignoring the needs and wants of all other inhabitants of the earth is, well, self-indulgent at best and dangerously infantile at worst.

That may be why Rand chose a sociopath who killed a little girl as the model for one of her "heroes". As you may know, lacking possession of empathy for others, extreme narcissism and being only interested in what one wants at any particular moment can be sometimes cute and oftentimes maddening in a child. Yet, in an adult – well, it's not an overly promising model for a free society. In fact it seems to lead to taking out one's crayons and drawing Hitler moustaches on pictures of the president.

When you're a child, you may hit another kid because he has a toy train and, quite frankly, you want it. Once a fully grown tea bagger, however, this pre-adolescent anger seems to translate into bringing firearms to the vicinity of where the president's speaking.

I wonder which Comment is Free article will be today's "we only posted this for the schadenfreude of watching it get mauled to death in the comments thread".


Keep Gitmo open
Guantánamo Bay has become a model detention centre. Closing it is an empty political gesture that makes little sense

Ah, that'll be it.

Rubbish celeb endorsements alert!

On today's Comment is Free, there is the earth-shattering revelation that 80s childrens TV presenter Floella Benjamin is endorsing the Liberal Democrats.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has been informed of the shock news, and is reported to have said, "Fuck me, didn't she used to do Playschool?"

That said, it's still not as funny as Mike Reid's now-legendary endorsement of Boris Johnson. Just to remember, he had such profound political insights as:

Let's train traffic wardens to exercise common sense and reward Londoners who work hard, rather than hitting them with constant stealth taxes.

Ahhh, good times, good times.

So, what's the most rubbish celeb endorsement you've seen or heard recently? It can be rubbish in terms of the celeb being rubbish themselves or endorsing rubbish things. Bonus points if you combine the two and get, say, Nikki from Big Brother endorsing haemorrhoid cream.

You lot should know my Saturday morning routine by now. Get up, yawn, make a cup of tea, and then turn to Comment is Free to find something that'll make me really quite angry

This morning, what's making me really quite angry is an article by James Murdoch - Rupert Murdoch's little mini-me hellspawn offspring. James Murdoch explains that believing in the BBC is like believing in creationism.

While creationism may provide an illusion of certainty, it has harmful effects. Creationism penalises the poorest with regressive taxes – such as the licence fee. [Eh?] It promotes inefficient infrastructure such as digital terrestrial television. It creates unaccountable institutions - the BBC Trust, Channel 4 and Ofcom. And it threatens significant damage to the provision of independent news, to investment in professional journalism, and to the growth of the creative industries.

Yep, that's independent news and professional journalism of the kind you get in Fox News and the Sun.

Murdoch then goes on to explain that because Sky has a few arts channels, you can overlook the vast outpourings of shit that come out of the Murdoch press.

Oh, and have a read of this passage from Murdoch's article. I'll ask you a question at the end:

Independence is sustained by true accountability to customers. People who buy the newspapers, open the application, decide to take out the TV subscription – people who choose a service they value. And people value honest, fearless, and independent news coverage that challenges the consensus.

There is an inescapable conclusion. The only reliable, durable, and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.

Now, here's my question.

Poll #1450484
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

How did you visualise him saying it?

Down in the comments thread, a reader asks:

This is going to turn into one of thosethread, isn't it?

Where everyone lines up to give the author a pasting.

900 + comments?

So far he's not looking wrong. 194 comments so far and counting...

I'm a few days behind the curve on this one, but I can now announce that Comment is Free has reached its square root.

For years, CiF has been such a rich, snarkable vein of political frothmouth and fuckwittery, but this week they've hit the motherlode, the platonic ideal of badly-reasoned, ideological bollocks. Oh, they'll reliably throw us some hardcore Stalinism from Seamus Milne, or Harry Phibbs acting like he's ruling the country from the prefects room of Eton...but this, ladies and gentlemen, is the crowning achievement. They have been graced with the presence of the Pharoah of Frothmouth, the Schnizzle to the Fuckwitizzle. Yes, Sarah Palin has written an article for Comment is Free.

Actually, it's a reprint from the Washington Post, and I'm not sure she wrote it, since the absence of crayon suggests the work of a ghost-writer, but still...

Sarah Palin doesn't like Barack Obama's new cap-and-trade plan to cut carbon emissions. Yeah, it's a schocker, isn't it? And she's normally such a fan of everything he does.

Anyways, her solution? You'll never guess...it's drill, baby, drill.

We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil.

God places energy resources under the feet of his favourite people? Oh bugger, looks like Islam is the true religion. I'm off to the mosque to hastily convert before I annoy the Boss any more than I have.

But Sarah, I hear you cry, isn't it the case that US oil production peaked in 1970, and has been in decline ever since? Surely all the drilling in the world won't change that? And what about this climate change malarkey?

Sarah's reply, masterful as ever, is, "hrrfmumblemumblefzztmumble."

She does, however, give a characteristic smackdown to the cap-and-trade plan.

The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

Maybe, but carry on with drill, baby, drill...and even Sarah Palin will understand peak oil and climate change.

Naturally, all this is a rich seam of bullshit for the CiF commentariat to gleefully rip to shreds. It's like all their Brendan O'Neills come at once. A few sample comments:

Quit, baby, quit!

....

What about turning all the crystal meth produced in Wasilla into thermal energy? I'm gonna take another hit now, so if you excuse me...

....



You gave up the governorship to become a CiF columnist?

Blimey. I'm humbled.

....

Sarah, this is exactly the kind of visionary insight we need in such troubled times. And my what a convincing, thought out and long-termist argument, put forward with an terrifically varied vocabulary! Did you go to college or something?!

Oh please do make a run in 2012, we know you can do it!

Keep up the great work; we're all rooting for you.....

Rgds

Barack


Snarkasm aside, this WSJ article about Sarah Palin is made of pure win.

Indeed, if political figures stand for ideas, victimization is what Ms. Palin is all about. It is her brand, her myth. Ronald Reagan stood tall. John McCain was about service. Barack Obama has hope. Sarah Palin is a collector of grievances. She runs for high office by griping...

To become a symbol of this stature Ms. Palin has had to do the opposite of most public figures. Where others learn to take hostility in stride, she and her fans have developed the thinnest of skins. They find offense in the most harmless remarks and diabolical calculation in the inflections of the anchorman's voice. They take insults out of context to make them seem even more insulting. They pay close attention to voices that are ordinarily ignored, relishing every blogger's sneer, every celebrity's slight, every crazy Internet rumor.

Today, for your delectation, we have a left-wing nobcheese defending the indefensible, and a right-wing nobcheese defending the indefensible.

From the left...George Galloway shouting a lot at the producer of Undercover Mosque for having the temerity to expose hate speech by radical Islamist clerics. George ignores all the evidence put forward by the show in favour of hysterically ranting at them about anti-Muslim bias, before going into full-on meltdown mode in the last two minutes.



The footage thankfully stops before George's mangina explodes, but not before this classic exchange.

George: "This hooligan will have to be thrown out if he doesn't stop shouting at me."

Producer: "I'm laughing at you, George."

And from the right...Conservative Home's Tim Montgomery declares that the Andy Coulson/News of the World scandal is "about revenge, not phone taps."

No Tim, it's about phone taps.

Tim makes the shamelessly brown-nosing claim that:

I do not wish to defend every action of the News International empire, but Rupert Murdoch has been an overwhelming force for good in this country's life and politics.

Sadly for Tim, the editors appears to have snipped out the bit where he says, "OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MR MURDOCH, I RILLY RILLY RILLY WANT A COLUMN IN THE TIMES OH PLEASE!"

You know, I haven't had the chance to fly into a homicidal rage lately, so I think I'll pay a visit to Comment is Free.

What's this, an article by the Audit Commission's Steve Bundred advocating lots of public sector spending cuts?

let's dismiss the notion that spending on health and education will be protected. There are good reasons why they won't and shouldn't. One is that, at a time when inflation is likely to be between 2% and 3%, a pain-free way of cutting public spending would be to freeze public sector pay, or at least impose severe pay restraint....

Okay, as a public sector worker in the NHS, I'm starting to twitch...

...ministers will correctly assume that as public sector workers have done well over the past decade, they will tolerate some modest real reduction in earnings...

*twitches harder*

My own experience is testimony to this. When I joined Camden Council in north London in January 1992, its financial position could only be described as dire. With the support of councillors, the following month I presented a budget which cut £25m from net expenditure of around £220m. In July, I cut a further £10m. In November I raised £47m from asset sales. The following February, I cut another £30m. Within 18 months, the council's workforce had shrunk nearly a third, from around 9,500 to fewer than 6,500. The result was that staff morale and service quality improved.

Okay, I'm still twitching, but I'm not feeling the full rage. Sure, he fired 3000 council workers, but maybe he did succeed in giving Camden residents value for money? Oh wait, here's the money shot.

Local government’s top watchdog is paid more than the prime minister, a survey by the Taxpayers’ Alliance pressure group has shown.

Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred was 67th on the alliance’s ‘public sector rich list’.

He was paid £246,000 - including performance-related pay of£15,000 and pension benefits of£38,000 - while Gordon Brown, at position 143, received £188,849. The commission declined to comment.



Public sector worker SMASH!

Best! Comment is Free headline! EVEEEERRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!

I refuse to join the chorus of outrage about Bruno. It's a very moral film - despite the pygmy sex

Ah, following on from my previous post, it looks like Comment is Free is now back to its nice, predictable levels of stupidity.

Beatrix Campbell announces: "Yes, yes, I may be a Marxist feminist gay activist who opposes everything the monarchy stands for, but I still accepted my OBE because it was a statement for equal opportunities."

Ah, the irony. Being rewarded by the monarchy for equal opportunities.

Look Beatrix, you could have just said, "Okay, an award from the monarchy is against all my principles....BUT I RILLY RILLY WANTED IT! IT WAS SHINY!"


Beatrix Campbell also claims to have once been chatted up by "an intergalactic film star". Zaphod Beeblebrox?

God, it's so horrible having to slate an author you usually like.

If I'm reading Comment is Free (and, as you lot will know, I do so far too much for my own sanity) and Brendan O'Neill posts an article saying, Rah, rah, we don't need to worry about silly things like climate change or peak oil cos, like, humanity is rilly great and won't be bothered by it...Then that's fine, that's just Brendan O'Neill being a libertarian fucknut. It's what he does.

And if Seamus Milne posts yet a-bloody-nother utterly humourless, shamelessly ideological Stalinist analysis of current events...Well, that's the natural order of things. The Sun will rise in the morning, autumn will follow summer, Seamus Milne will be a dreary ultra-left hack.

But when an author you actually like and admire does a horribly silly article defending the indefensible, then it's like a rapier strike to your soul. Seth Freedman is one of CiF's regular commentators on Israel/Palestine, and comes from the small-but-appreciated "Not Actually Insane" wing of that particular field. He's an island of moderation and reason in a stormy ocean of screeching fanatical halfwits.

And then he sodding well goes and writes this. An article saying how wonderful it is that WH Smith have signed a deal with Penguin so you can only buy Penguin's travel books in their shops. Yay for a large publisher forcing its smaller rivals out of business! Hurrah for monopolies!

Oh, why couldn't it have been Neil Clarke writing it? Or Tanya Gold? Or any of the pissawful writers on CiF that I've grown to feel comfortable loathing and slagging off?

The betrayal, the betrayal...

Sometimes I think Comment is Free gives people a platform purely for the sheer joy of watching them get slaughtered in the comments threads.

This week: Sting's wife Trudie Styler responds to criticism that she flies around in private jets while campaigning for the environment.

Of course I use aeroplanes. Even the most dogmatic and dictatorial advocates of environmental reform would be hard pressed to suggest that Ecuador (and, yes, Washington) are practical places to reach by wagon train or boat.

Oh, but Trudie, you weren't being criticised for using a private plane to get to some remote region of Ecuador, and you weren't expected to use a wagon train to get to Washington DC. You were accused of using a private plane to fly your 8-person entourage from New York to DC when you could have just taken the (non-wagon) train. And of flying 80 miles in a helicopter to visit Zac Goldsmith.

CiF editors, you are cruel beasts sometimes. I can just imagine you rubbing your hands and muttering [Mr Burns]"excellent"[/Mr Burns] when she submitted this.

Oh, and this is what wikipedia has to say about Trudie and Sting's lifestyle:

The couple own several homes worldwide, including Elizabethan manor house Lake House and its 60-acre country estate in Wiltshire, England, a country cottage in the Lake District, a New York City apartment, a beach house in Malibu, California, a 900-acre (3.6 km2) estate in Tuscany, Italy which produces organic honey and olive oil for Harrods, and two properties in London: an apartment on the Mall and an 18th century terrace house in Highgate.[2]

Clearly doing well on reducing your Carbon footprint then, Trudie.

There's a recurring meme among right-wingers that the Nazis were actually on the extreme left rather than the extreme right - see, they had word "socialist" in their name of National Socialists. Never mind the fact that they'd have shot you on the spot if you'd told them that they were left-wingers. It's a handy way of despatching any blame for the more unpleasant extremes of your political spectrum over to the other side.

(Incidentally, there's also a left-wing equivalent of this, where pro-war left blogs like Harry's Place declare the likes of George Galloway and the Socialist Workers Party to be far-right fascists.)

Anyway, a variation of the meme has popped up today on Comment is Free.

What Conservatives can add to this critique is something that the left can never admit: Nazism and communism are ideological twins. The BNP is in fact an extreme leftwing outfit. It wishes individual liberty to be sacrificed to state control. It seeks the overthrow of capitalism, and rages against profit and speculators. It wishes to institute a siege economy with protectionism and the nationalisation of foreign-owned companies. In this it is being consistent to its founding inspiration. Hitler nationalised the banks and insurance companies, the economy was rigidly centrally planned, there was an extensive programme of public works, independent schools were banned.




Yes, the BNP are indeed an extreme left-wing party. That's why they virulently despise everyone and everything to the left of Genghis Khan. It's because of, erm, projection, right?

The commentariat at Comment is Free are getting into their finest froth-mouth mode about...oh, take a wild guess...Israel. In this case, the Israeli entry to the Eurovision Song Contest.

The song features two women, a Jew and an Arab, singing about how "there must be another way"



Personally I thought it was rather sweet. The sort of why-can't-we-just-get-along peace anthem that we tend to laugh at when Sting and Paul MacCartney do it, but given who's singing the song, that does give it a certain poignancy. Certainly far better than another sermon from Rev Bono.

Anyway, the CiF article about it is rather sensible, but some of the people commenting on it are being impressively po-faced, such as this example.

Surely it is reasonable to expect that 'peace campaigners' would have come out publically against the recent attacks on Gaza. I don't think that these two singers did so and this raises questions about their political commitment.

Oh my God! Could this be the first Eurovision entry to be hit by a Will-You-Condemn-A-Thon?

I've decided to place a £10 outside bet on it. The odds are 250-1, so in the (admittedly unlikely) event of it winning, the profit will be pretty tidy.

I was in work yesterday, and one of the other nurses started talking about the new 50p top rate on income tax. His opinion wasn't what I expected.

"That's dreadful! If you've worked hard to be earning over £150,000, why should you have to pay that level of tax?"

Why on earth would a nurse (starting salary £20,000) want to waste sympathy on people earning over £150,000? Surely we have people closer to home on our psych ward more in need of sympathy. Okay, the high-earners have struggled to get there, but they're not struggling in the same way that, say, a person with a life-crippling psychotic illness is struggling.

Just to articulate the view further, Tetsuya Ishikawa explains in today's Comment is Free that This brain drain will cost the Treasury.

Fucking hell! We're going to have a brain drain! We're going to lose our doctors, scientists, engineers!

"This reaction shouldn't be underestimated. Within three hours of the 50% tax rate being announced last Wednesday, I had spoken to one hedge fund trader, a stock analyst, a corporate financier and a financial markets sales person in the City, all of whom were already planning or had formally requested to management a relocation away from London to a tax-friendly jurisdiction."

Oh, we're going to lose those people. The same idiots who got us into this mess in the first place. Stretches the definition of a "brain drain" if you ask me. Well, in that case...

Poll #1391732
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 29

They can...

EDIT: Incidentally, I've just noticed that the author of the article in question has also written a book entitled, How I Caused the Credit Crunch

"How I Caused the Credit Crunch" traces seven years at the forefront of the credit markets - a tale from the heart of the bewildering banking maelstrom whose catastrophic collapse has plunged the world towards the worst recession since the 1930s. Tetsuya Ishikawa's story reveals how a young Oxford graduate finds himself in command of vast sums of other people's money; how a novice to the mysteries of hedge funds, subprime mortgages and CDOs can fix complex deals for billions of dollars in the exclusive bars, brothels and trading floors of London, New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo, and reap the benefits in a colossal annual bonus and an international luxury lifestyle.

Seriously Tetsuya, we'll help you pack you suitcase.

From today's Comment is Free:

Using tissue after you've been to the loo is bad for the planet. Washing is the greener option – and it's more hygienic too

Look, I'm happy to do my bit for the environment. I recycle. I use energy-efficient light bulbs. I turn off the standby button on my TV. I drive a small car...

BUT FOR GOD'S SAKE LEAVE ME MY TOILET PAPER FOR WHEN I'VE DONE MY BUSINESS!

Some things are just sacred. The way I take a poo is one of them.

Al Murray's new show has a character that's described as:

a camp Nazi officer dressed in a pink rubber suit who's only out-camped by a John Barrowman cameo.

My first reaction to that was "cool!" Sadly, based on this YouTube video, it actually turns out to be rather unfunny.



In fact, the only good thing about the character is that, over on Comment is Free, it's got Patrick Strudwick screaming for a waaaahmbulance.

But while the mincing, screaming sexual predator antics are distasteful enough in pandering to every nasty lie propagated about gay people, it's the backdrop that renders them truly galling. Namely, Nazi Germany. As a history graduate from Oxford, Murray should know this period, but perhaps he needs a reminder.

Personally I'm of the view that comedy should push the boundaries of taste, and my gut instinct tells me that anything that gets humourless CiF writers into a self-righeous strop is inherently worth supporting. On the other hand, there's the unfortunate fact that it just isn't all that funny. It's a dilemma.

Still, the final word should come from one of the commenters to Strudwicks CiF article. In response to Strudwick's words that:

Imagine if the character of Schwull was Jewish. And he was shown guzzling chicken soup, while re-enacting Yentl, taking money out of Hitler's pocket and attempting to slash off every foreskin in sight. It is unthinkable.

A commenter replies:

Unthinkable? It's awesome.

Richard Seymour, SWP ideologue and author of the Lenin's Tomb blog, has finally been given a column on Comment is Free. I suppose it had to happen eventually.

This week, he explains:

Barack Obama is not actually planning to end the war in Afghanistan. This stunning revelation, cunningly concealed in his election manifesto, will require the support of the Harry's Place/Euston Manifesto lot, who are almost as irrelevant and annoying as the SWP, but with whom I've been having an internet pissing contest since 2003.


What do you mean, I'm projecting my own trivial disputes onto world politics?



I paraphrase, but only slightly.