spiritof76

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

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.

Today, the internets contains large numbers of people who should have their computer taken away from them, lest they start chewing the keyboard.

Via dot_pagan_snark a random LJer gives a rational, non-deranged opinion on the Hudson river plane crash.

The television announcers are repeatedly saying that it was so fortunate that nobody died. Fuck that, and fuck them. At least two murders occurred. Not just accidental deaths, but murders! I think serious attention needs to be drawn to the fact that it is definitely, most assuredly murder. It is callous and uncaring murder for the sake of profits and convenience. Many, many cultures define murder as killing that has nothing to do with survival. The Hebrew translations of the Bible say as much. The deaths of these birds, which happens daily and in large numbers, serves to feed nobody, and you can sure as Hel bet that these murdering airline companies don't work to preserve and better fowl habitats. No bellies are being filled with goose meat from these poor creatures tonight, while so many human people starve and eat poisonous filth. This the perfect example of the natural world being ground down in the machines of civilization, in this case quite literally.

Meanwhile, on Comment is Fuckwits, Peregrine Worsthorne announces that social mobility is bad for society, because it stops the oiks from knowing their place. (Peregrine Worsthorne understands the working classes completely, because he asked his butler about it.)

Nor has upward mobility done much for the governing class since the qualities required to rise to the top – ruthless ambition and relentless self-promotion – are not at all the same as those required to govern and adminster the great institutions of a civilised society.

Indeed, Peregrine. The quality required is that Daddy used to do the same job.

Of course this truth was temporarily obscured by the enormous post-Big Bang financial success of the City of London, which was unquestionably facilitated by the thrusting beneficiaries of upward social mobility.

Yep, that's why the credit crunch happened. Too many of the lower orders wound up working in the City.

One would not know this from studying the media, since the media today is largely dominated by the meritocratic beneficiaries of social mobility

Erm, Peregrine, you do realise that getting a job in journalism these days requires doing lots of unpaid internships? And that this all but closes off a career in that profession to large numbers of otherwise highly talented individuals who don't have cash to support them from mater and pater?

Also on Comment is Fuckwits today, Elizabeth Wurtzel explains if you disagree with the Israelis flattening Gaza, it can only possibly be because you're an anti-semite. This is absolute definitely definitely the only conceivable explanation.

Excepting a business trip I took to England, Scotland and Ireland in early 2002, I have not been to Europe since 9/11. It's become an unbearable place to be, as the anti-American feelings in light of the Iraq war have mingled with antisemitism to a point where they are indistinguishable,

So, Elizabeth, you know that Europe is unbearable to be in, even though you haven't set foot in it for 7 years? Good to know you've done your research.

Here's a depressing article from Ben Goldacre..

A prominent campaigner against AIDS medication died last week. Of AIDS.


*shakes head*

Edit: Some of the comments left in response to Ben's article just make me want to kick something. Take this one.

My view is roughly that AIDS is another (like bird flu and SARS) giant UN generated wind up that frightened a whole generation (mine) with a lot of overblown nonsense about millions of hetrosexuals dying which didn't happen.

The infection ratein Britain is incredibly low and it seems very strange that millions are supposed to be infected in Africa with very primitive medical diagnosis technology. The answer of course as I said before is that the UN is lying to promote its own usefelness. No doubt international aid is also available to regions reporting high numbers and drug companies are also doing well out of it. In other words, it's an industry.

Deep breaths....deeeeeep breaths....

Comment is Free (or, Opinions are Like Arseholes, as mippy calls it) has got me particularly exercised today.

Today, ex-KGB agent Richard Gott tells us, Cuba is, like, rilly rilly great. And wouldn't it be just AMAZING if Barack Obama came to Cuba to sing the praises of the Castro regime?"

Yes, Richard, and it would also be amazing if I had a solid-gold toilet, but that's not going to happen either.

Tanya Gold writes a piece on an ex-boyfriend she's got a grudge against. Fantastic. I'm a bit narked about the time the landlord is taking to do some renovations. Do I get to publish a CiF think-piece about that too? Anyway, it includes the classic line, "if a man with bad teeth tries to drag you to a gang-bang any time soon, don't go." Cheers, we'll remember that.

(From Tanya Gold's archive on Cif: Men don't like intelligent women. I "prove" this by going to a speed-dating night and lecturing the men on economics. Funnily enough, yes I am still single)

Anyway, I think I'm going to design a Comment is Free roleplaying game. Kind of like World of Warcraft, except with political mudslinging. Every player gets an author ID, a commenter ID, and a secret weapon.

Poll #1324087
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Choose your author ID

Choose your commenter ID

Choose your secret weapon

On Comment is Free, Andrew Brown defends the Pope's comments equating defending heterosexuality with preserving the rainforests.

His article includes this comment:

Partly, of course, this is because there are an enormous number of gay Catholic priests and activists. In this country alone, I can think of one bishop (my acquaintance among RC bishops not being large) one prominent aid worker, and a journalist much given to denouncing the wickedness of liberals.

Quick, everyone! Let's start the sweepstake!

I watched the BBC/HBO TV series House of Saddam a few months back. I thought it was pretty good, if strangely reminiscent of a Middle Eastern version of The Sopranos.

Today on Comment is Free, Brian Brivati writes:

In a four-part series that had to encapsulate the entirety of Saddam's reign and downfall, the show failed to sufficiently address my own personal obsessions and fixations. I therefore declare the whole thing to be a pro-Saddam whitewash

And the award for Most Uninentionally Hilarious Statement Posted In The Comments Thread goes to:

The Liberal HBO Just suits the British attitude to artificially look from above the "natives" and miss the crucial point….. and to glorify the worst (Saddam, Palestinian Arabs, Islamic out broad terrorists) and at the same time to demonize the best (Republicans, Israel, Christianity, Jews).

They'll Never Be Changed!

On today's Comment is Free, Harry Phibbs condemns the Health and Safety culture ruining the Great British Panto.

Nottingham Council are getting into the festive spirit by sabotaging the local panto. They have banned the use of Shetland ponies in a new production of Cinderella...The council bans live animals performing in all council-run premises citing animal welfare and health and safety. So the Fairy Godmother will enter in a carriage pulled by two cast members wearing horses heads. Not quite the same, is it?

Personally, I thought the likes of panto horses were traditionally played by actors in costumes, rather than Shetland ponies.

Clearly these Shetland ponies are being brought in as scab workers to take away jobs from our Great British Panto Horse Actors. Therefore Phibbs must be a neo-Thatherite inside man, and he and his Shetland pony lackeys should be denounced as such.

Anyway, speaking as one who was forced to endure the "fun" of a panto last week, I'd just like to say that when the Stalinist regime has been put into place, I shall make it my personal business to instruct the Stasi to execute all purveyors of panto on the spot, and the audiences shipped to a purpose-built gulag on the Isle of Man.

On Comment is Free, for some reason Peter Tatchell has discovered Cornish nationalism and started demanding a parliament for Cornwall.

Speaking as a native of Cornwall, I've never really thought of Cornish nationalism as anything other than a bit of a joke. The likes of Mebyon Kernow have always polled very poorly in Cornwall, and I think the idea of a Cornish nation is little more than a mix of starry-eyed romanticism and small-town parochialism. In other words, do not want.

Fortunately Cornish MP Matthew Taylor has replied with a worryingly sensible and reasonable piece saying that what Cornwall needs is decent services that take into account local issues and problems, and not necessarily a fancy parliament.

I left a jokey comment saying, "What's a sensible, well-argued piece like this doing on CiF? Where's some foam-at-the-mouth gibberish from Seamus Milne or Brendan O'Neill when you need it, eh?"

It promptly got deleted by the moderators. That's an offensive thing to say, is it?

Though strangely, this comment didn't seem to be offensive enough to be deleted:

Much of what Matthew Taylor says is difficult to disagree with. However, one must bear in mind that Mr Taylor (or his successor in the next general election) must take care of the sensitivities of his electorate in Truro which, as you all know, is not a typically 'Cornish' constituency. The ethnic background breakdown I venture to suggest would suggest that the ethnic Cornish are in a minority as opposed to the ethnic English community that forms a majority. Since many of that majority (not all of them by any means) exhibit extreme sensitivity in regard to Cornish identity (similar views are promulgated here on CIF), Mr Taylor, should he wish further success in the ballot box in the future, needs to be very careful of what he says in public. That having been said, Mr Taylor does make some very good points indeed but note, he does stay well away from the 'ethnicity' and historico/constitutional arguments.

More fucknuttery on Comment is Free today, this time an article condemning James Bond.


We ought to have learned by now that combining sex with ironic fun is dodgy. Anyone who fails to see a connection between Playboy bunny girls and paedophilia is culpably blind. The Bond cult is central to the pornification of mainstream culture. It is not a great British tradition, despite all the gushy publicity. It's the worst of us.

Okay...

1. What's wrong with combining sex with ironic fun? Sounds like the basis for an excellent evening.

2. Show me a single case of somebody who was converted to paedophilia by Playboy bunny girls.

3. James Bond is escapist fun, not social commentary. Now grow a pair of testicles and book yourself a ticket for Quantum of Solace, you pseudo-PC pansy.

And this week's award for a batshit crazy comment on Comment is Free goes to:


Barack Obama is rightly feted as the one politician from either side who stood up against the folly of the Iraq war.

By 2012 we will probably have had 14 years of continual global cooling so Sarah Palin's credibility as the only candidate on either of the 2008 tickets to see the "Climate Change" con for what it always was will be huge.


Yes, good luck with that prediction.

I could turn this into a series. The supply of material is almost infinite.