[objet petit a]

Moving House: More Updates Soon

2009-11-12T00:12:00.000Z

Three More Drugs Advisors Resign

2009-11-10T22:12:00.002Z

More bad headlines for Alan Johnson - three more drugs advisors have resigned. According to the Beeb, 'Dr John Marsden, Dr Ian Ragan and Dr Simon Campbell have quit the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs after two others left earlier this month. Members of the council had met Alan Johnson seeking reassurance that their independence would not be compromised.' The Graun is reporting that the 'loss of three more members of the council brings the total who have gone to six out of an original membership of 31 the home secretary appointed to advise him on drugs policy. Many of those remaining, who include police officers and judges, are there as representatives of organisations and are unlikely to tender personal resignations.'

Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Blackbird

2009-11-09T15:06:00.003Z

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

 I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

 The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
 The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
 The shadow of the blackbird
 Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
 Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

 O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
 Do you not see how the blackbird
 Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

 I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
 Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
 Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

 He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
 It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

'Home Office Covered Up Immigration Risk'

2009-11-08T00:19:00.008Z

Labour's “open door” immigration policy knowingly risked allowing dangerous people to settle in Britain unchecked, according to documents seen by The Sunday Times. The Whitehall correspondence, which was illegally withheld by the Home Office for four years, shows how ministers were told by the country’s most senior immigration official that his staff were to be “encouraged to take risks” when granting visas, work permits and extended residency to hundreds of thousands of new migrants.

The cover-up of this policy of risk-taking was so concerted that Richard Thomas, the then information commissioner, sent a team of investigators into the Home Office to trawl all the relevant papers. Earlier this year he rebuked the department for breaking the law and ordered it to release the material under the freedom of information (FoI) law.

This is scandalous - read the full story here. It adds extra weight to Neather's claim that ministers have been deliberately socially-engineering Britain. Surely it's no coincidence that 'with up to 80% of ethnic minorities voting Labour, it is obvious that the more immigrants who get the right to vote, the greater is Labour’s electoral share.' [....]

Ah, now it becomes clear. Be afraid.

Look!

2009-11-07T18:30:00.002Z

I am becalmed in a deep sea
And give signals, but they are not answered.
And yet I see ships in the distance
And give signals, but they do not answer.

Am I a pariah ship, or a leper
To be shunned reasonably?
Or did I commit a crime long ago
And have forgotten, but they remember?

Into the dark night into darker I move
And the lights of the ships are not seen now
But instead there is a phosphorescence from the water
That light shines, and now I see

Low down, as I bend my hand into the water
A fish so transparent in his inner organs
That I know he comes from the earthquake bed
Five miles below where I sail, I sail.

All his viscera are transparent, his eyes globule on stalks
Is he dead? Or alive and only languid? Now
Into my hand he comes, the travelling creature,
Not from the sea-bed only but from generations,
Faint because of the lighter pressure,
Fainting, a long fish, stretched out.

So we meet, and for a moment
I forget my solitariness.
But then I should like to show him,
And who shall I show him to?

Sweet Thing

2009-11-07T16:07:00.003Z

From Van Morrison's
Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl [2009]
Click here for the video.

'Quietly Confident'

2009-11-06T16:15:00.006Z

The Guardian have been going for the jugular over the Tories' position on Europe, (see here, here and here) but all their sound and fury doesn't seem to be having much of an effect, as yesterday's poll demonstrated. James Forsyth at the Spectator sums it up nicely:

On Wednesday afternoon few of us would have thought that the row over the Tories’ Europe policy would appear to have died down by Friday afternoon. There have been a couple of resignations from the Tory front bench in the European Parliament, a few MPs have mouthed off and a French foreign minister has launched a spectacular—and stupidly phrased attack on it. But it is all quiet out there now. The main reason for this is that the Euro-sceptics are quietly confident. The overwhelming mood among those I have spoken to is that Cameron either has to get the powers back he said he would and show that his measure to prevent any further transfers of sovereignty are effective or there will have to be at some point after 2014 an in or out referendum.

The chances of having a hung parliament next May have decreased. Personally I'd rather see a hanged parliament...

Tories Maintain Poll Lead

2009-11-05T22:10:00.008Z

The YouGov poll conducted in the wake of Cameron's bactracking on the Lisbon treaty referendum and outlining his position on Europe is as follows:

CON: 41% (nc)
LAB: 27% (-1)
LIB: 17% (+1)

The total for “others” is at 16% but we do not know what the breakdown of that figure is. Even the detailed data released this evening does not specify what UKIP and the BNP, in particular, were recording. So all within the margin of error but from Labour's perspective the trend is in the wrong direction. [....] So the first conclusion is that the Tories don’t seem to have been damaged by the abandonment of the Lisbon treaty pledge in spite of fierce criticism being reported both from within their ranks and outside - perhaps reinforcing the point that very few voters regard Europe and EU-related issues as central to their view of the coming election.

Interesting - I was expecting more of a backlash. But does this mean that (1) people on the whole don't care about Europe as an issue, (2) the public's minds are already made up as regards voting intention, or (3) the anti-Labour mood is still strong enough to override any criticism of the Tories? And if (3) is true, can we ever escape from Buggins' turn politics? How?

MPs Reject Key Kelly Demand

2009-11-05T14:43:00.005Z

Paul Waugh of the Evening Standard is on the ball:

[....] Today's Standards and Privileges Committee report on Alan Duncan includes a few lines that are much, much more important than their verdict on Dunky himself (who was fully cleared). The Committee - which is meant to police MPs behaviour don't forget - is very narked that Labour MP John Mann wrote to Standards Commissioner John Lyon to ask for an investigation into Dunky's conduct....without submitting a formal complaint.

"We wish to re-emphasise that we will agree to the Commissioner investigating allegations against Members in the absence of a formal complaint only in exceptional circumstances”. “Investigations of this kind cost public money and can divert resources away from other work. We will not allow the Commissioner’s office to be used by MPs simply as a means of refuting unfounded allegations that appear in the press."   But hold on, isn't this a direct rebuff of one of Sir Christopher Kelly's key recommendations yesterday? [....]

Some things never change...

Autumn Leaves

2009-11-04T22:08:00.004Z

From Cannonball Adderley's Somethin' Else [1958]

Cannonball Adderley on alto sax
Miles Davis on trumpet
Hank Jones on piano
Sam Jones on bass
Art Blakey on drums

Listen to it here.

Cameron On Europe

2009-11-04T17:03:00.005Z

Earlier this afternoon the Tory leader David Cameron gave a speech on his party's European policy - you can read the speech in full over at Iain Dale's blog. Andrew Sparrow at the Graun summarises it as follows:

First, [Cameron] will legislate to ensure that there has to be a referendum whenever powers are transferred to Europe. He says the "referendum lock" will cover not just those occasions when the EU signs a new treaty. It will cover any transfer of power. This will be a major constitutional change. But he won't have a "made-up referendum". (This is a direct reference to the David Davis article in today's Daily Mail.) If the Tories win an election, they will already have a mandate to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU.

Second, Cameron says he will introduce a new law, a UK Sovereignty Bill, to make sure that ultimate authority remains in Westminster. It won't be about striking down EU laws. It will just put the UK on a par with Germany, where legislation says the ultimate authority lies with the German parliament.

Third, Cameron says he will legislate to stop the use of the "ratchet" clauses in the Lisbon treaty that would allow the further transfer of powers without another EU treaty. The effect of these changes would be to ensure that a Lisbon situation would happen "never again".

[....] It's a very clever speech: gradualist Euroscepticism. He's proposing some radical (and possibly unrealistic) repatriation of EU powers, but giving himself five years to achieve it. And he's telling the Tory Eurosceptics, like Davis, that a referendum on Britain's relationship with the EU is an option - but not until the election after next. That might be one of the key news lines: Cameron is ruling out a referendum for the next four or five years.

I predict the next poll will show a small UKIP gain (+2/3) at the Tories' expense. We'll see.

Claude Lévi-Strauss: 1908-2009

2009-11-04T15:54:00.006Z

R.I.P.
Times obituary here.

Pianoless Vexations

2009-11-04T00:19:00.008Z

Pianoless Vexations, an eight-hour performance of Erik Satie's Vexations [1893] was performed at The Sculpture Centre in New York City on Sunday June 11th, 2006, 11-7pm. Vexations was composed by Erik Satie in 1893 and consists of a short motif repeated 840 times. Satie directs on the score: 'In order to play this motif 840 times consecutively to oneself, it will be useful to prepare oneself beforehand, and in utter silence, by grave immobilities.' Vexations was first performed publicly by John Cage and several other pianists over the course of 19 hours in 1963. As the title conveys, artists performing in Pianoless Vexations used any instrument except the piano to perform Satie's original composition. Instruments included laptops, drums, guitar, French horn, violin, trumpet, saxophone, viola, recorder, toy piano, harpsichord, mandolin, bass, film projectors, voice, dulcimer and more. Artists performed in continuous twenty-minute segments throughout the day.

Listen to it here, at the excellent website UbuWeb, where you can find an enormous archive of rare MP3s, old video files and performance poetry, conceptual writing etc. Check it out - it's one of the best avant-garde sites on the web.

Lacanian Fonts

2009-11-03T19:07:00.005Z

Having trouble expressing those pesky psychoanalytic formulae?
Get your Lacanian fonts here!

Prometheus On His Crag

2009-11-03T15:05:00.003Z

Prometheus On His Crag

Can see Io fleeting across the map,
A rout of tribulation - a cry
Bucking the bee of the Creator.

And she can see him - a relief
Carved into summit granite,
Quarried by the Creator's offal-eater.

Is she his secret soul - or is he hers?
If she could rest, would his chains drop off him?
If he could burst his chains, could she rest?

It matters.

Science Or Belief?

2009-11-03T12:36:00.012Z

Tim Nicholson of Oxford, who worked as the head of sustainability at Grainger PLC in Didcot, has been told that 'he can take his employer to tribunal on the grounds he was unfairly dismissed because of his views on climate change. [....] In March a judge ruled the 42-year-old could use employment equality laws to claim unfair dismissal. But the firm appealed against this as it believed his views were political and a "lifestyle choice." [....] After the hearing, his solicitor, Shah Qureshi, said: "Essentially what the judgment says is that a belief in man-made climate change and the alleged resulting moral imperative is capable of being a philosophical belief and is therefore protected by the 2003 religion or belief regulations."'

So climate-change has now become a 'belief'. I think the firm is right on this: whether man-made climate-change is true or false (it's false), and whether any 'moral imperative' results from it is immaterial - the point is that any effects (or lack of them) can be scientifically verified. The basis of the climate-change argument is in the realm of fact not the mystery of faith so therefore it's science, and no more a 'philosophical belief' than saying 'the moon is made of green cheese.' Therefore Nicholson's 'belief' and his moral decision is a 'lifestyle choice.' I hope that if Nicholson's appeal is successful, it doesn't set a precedent so that employers have to take seriously the really loony beliefs, the sort espoused by the ragbag of nutters that tend to make it onto the news: flat-earthers, UFO-hunters, Scientologists and so on. That would be a disaster...

Intellectual Apartheid

2009-11-02T17:07:00.011Z

In the wake of the recent drugs classification row, Jeremy Sare, 'a former head of drug legislation and ACMD secretary in the Home Office', writes in the Grauniad that:

Ministers have blundered into this complex arena [of drugs and politics] with a tabloid view of how to "fix a policy", oblivious of pesky irritations like scientific evidence. According to an old hand at the Home Office, the advisory council was "historically the driving force behind the drugs strategy". By 2007, the council was deliberately marginalised by Jacqui Smith and its secretariat pushed out to an area far from influence on drug legislation. [....] Since the publication of the disputed cannabis and ecstasy reports, officials have been "banned from speaking to council members". They are forced to meet officials surreptitiously in bars and restaurants around Westminster. No wonder Nutt and his colleagues are resentful; ministers had created a form of intellectual apartheid.

This is very worrying indeed, and the Tories' silence on this issue is foreboding. Are we likely to have a change of culture with a change of government? I fear not...

UPDATE: On the topic of drugs, Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesman Chris Huhne has found out (by Parliamentary Question) that the average fine for possessing crack cocaine is cheaper than a parking ticket. He rather sensibly points out that 'fining addicts can boomerang because crime is often their primary source of income, and more fines may mean more crime.'

La Planète Sauvage

2009-11-02T16:50:00.003Z

Watch this trippy 1970s sci-fi film here.

Don't have nightmares...

Skunk Hour

2009-11-02T13:15:00.010Z

(for Elizabeth Bishop)

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill -
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall,
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl,
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town...
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
'Love, O careless Love...' I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat...
I myself am hell,
nobody's here -

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air -
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage
pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

---Robert Lowell
Click here for the audio file. What a voice.

Brown Backs Johnson Over Sacking

2009-11-02T12:20:00.010Z

The drugs controversy caused by Alan Johnson's sacking of Prof. Nutt (and the spate of protest-resignations that followed) is showing no sign of abating. This isn't the first time ministers have been accused of trying to fabricate evidence to support a policy they'd already decided to implement regardless of what the experts think - over at Heresy Corner there's extremely strong evidence to suggest that the government take the same attitude towards policy relating to people-trafficking and prostitution (I've linked to this before, I know). Alan Johnson's truly awful interview with Adam Boulton yesterday didn't help the situation: he lost his temper in a most unstatesmanlike manner, especially considering this is his first real test as Home Secretary. There's also been some speculation that the interview could've blown his chances at the Labour leadership when Brown eventually departs. I think there's some merit in these suggestions - Johnson's overpromoted as it is, he isn't capable of in-depth strategic thought and he clearly lacks self-control. For what it's worth, (assuming he isn't directly involved in any scandals between now and May) my money's on Ed Balls.

UPDATE: It has emerged that Alan Johnson ordered a review of the ACMD on Oct. 13th, to 'look at the composition and role of members of the Council, the resources available to help it carry out its work, the way it sets its agenda, how it reaches decisions and how the council provides advice. But the review is not looking at the Council’s official terms of reference, which are to keep under review the situation in the UK with respect to drugs which are or appear likely to be misused and which maybe causing harm.' Hmm...

The Third Man

2009-11-02T11:32:00.004Z

Have some time to kill?
Watch The Third Man [1949] here.

Harman Hints At Expenses Whitewash

2009-11-01T14:26:00.013Z

There's a whiff of Tory sleaze in the air, but that's nothing compared to the government's weekend woes: The Justice Ministry had illegal staff as civil servants, the Ministry of Defence sent men to die in 'unsafe' helicopters, drug advisor Les King quit over the sacking of David Nutt, and now ministers want to commit political suicide over expenses. Sam Coates, the Times' chief political correspondent, is reporting that

a major report into MPs expenses will probably be watered down before it is implemented, Harriet Harman has reassured MPs. Sir Christopher Kelly’s blueprint — a six month report expected to recommend draconian curbs on allowances and a ban employing relatives — will be just one submission of several to the new independent parliamentary standards watchdog. Asked whether the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) could reject Sir Christopher’s proposals, Ms Harman said: “It’s entirely a matter for them. But they will, I'm sure, want to draw on his important work. It’s a matter for them to decide, not for Sir Christopher Kelly.” The Commons leader also put pressure on IPSA not to force MPs to dismiss husbands or wives employed as assistants, another recommendation widely expected to form part of the report. [....] She also urged IPSA to soften some of Sir Christopher's key recommendations, expected to include a ban on MPs claiming mortgage interest and being forced to rent. Furthermore all MPs who live within 60 minutes of Westminster would be banned from having a second home under his report.

There's only one way to make this problem go away: bite the bullet and implement Kelly's recommendations in full. Thanks to months and months of coverage the public know exactly what's been going on, and so a whitewash will only increase the backlash. You can kick and scream, but you can't escape the judgment of the electorate - remember the court of public opinion, Harriet? However, it may not be that simple - Guido draws attention to a very important point:

the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, a new quango created in a panic by the Parliamentary Standards Act in July, shows little sign of being that independent. It is headed by a civil servant with no particular track record in this area, staff are being transferred to it from the discredited fees office – the very people who failed before to stop MPs running amok in the past. The governance of the IPSA is ultimately at the pleasure of the Speaker. It is packed with politicians who will make sure nothing too drastic happens and safeguard the interests of the parasitical political class.

Mashed In Plastic

2009-11-01T14:04:00.005Z

Mashed In Plastic - the David Lynch mash-up album.
Download it for free, legally, here.

Drugs Are Bad, Hmmkay?

2009-10-31T20:06:00.029Z

You really have to wonder what goes through the minds of our elected representatives. How can Alan Johnson have failed to realise that sacking his chief drugs advisor Prof. David Nutt for criticising the government's drug policy was reactionary and disproportionately severe? Perhaps he's on drugs... According to the Guardian,

Nutt had accused ministers of "devaluing and distorting" the scientific evidence over illicit drugs by their decision last year to reclassify cannabis from class C to class B against the advice of the ACMD [The Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs]. A Home Office spokesman said: "The home secretary expressed surprise and disappointment over Professor Nutt's comments which damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs." In his reply, Nutt said: "If scientists are not allowed to engage in the debate then you devalue their contribution to policymaking." [....] The decision follows the publication of a paper by the Centre for Crime and Justice at King's College London, based on a lecture Nutt delivered in July. He repeated his familiar view that illicit drugs should be classified according to the actual evidence of the harm they cause and pointed out that alcohol and tobacco caused more harm than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

It seems obvious to me that drugs should be classified according to two measures: (1) their medical benefits, i.e. how effectively they relieve pain, kill viruses or whatever; and (2), the potential damage done by their abuse, taking into account physical and mental damage, the level of addictivity and the extent of their impact on society, etc. This is balanced and sensible. It seems equally obvious to me that any deviation from this system of classification can only be for narrow political purposes, and therefore certainly not in the public's best interest. Perhaps if the government understood that the profitability of illegal drugs (and thus the incentive to sell them) is directly correlative to their classification then we'd have much less partisan posturing and we'd all be better off, themselves included.

Anyone got any long skins?

UPDATE: From the Guardian: 'There were claims last night [Sat. 31st Oct] that many of those who sit on the 31-strong [ACMD] [....] may resign en masse, raising serious doubts about how ministers will justify policy decisions.' Dear oh dear. Click here for more.

UPDATE II: Another government drugs advisor, Dr Les King, has resigned. Another five more may follow...

UPDATE III: And another: Marian Walker, pharmacist and clinical director of Berkshire Healthcare NHS Trust...

European Ethics

2009-10-31T15:29:00.019Z

I'm fed up with the spectacle of the Blair-for-President media feeding-frenzy - it's been in the news for far too long. Not only does the job not exist yet because the Lisbon treaty has yet to be ratified by the Czechs, and not only has Blair not put himself forward, but he wouldn't get the job anyway: Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have given him the cold shoulder and his only remaining backers are Berlusconi and Brown, i.e. a crook and a failure. And let's not forget about the legendary Brown curse... Anyway, I was frightened to read Archbishop Cranmer's post about where the real centre of Euro-power lies. In his holy wisdom, he informs us that 'the President of the Commission (and he alone) appoints a group of ‘experts’ as the EU’s ethical advisers and spiritual guides.' (I trust the Archbishop will grant me forgiveness for quoting extensively from his post):

Dr [Lee] Rotherham [of the Taxpayers' Alliance] observes: ‘The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies is a moral compass in the Commission.’ They are tasked with ‘quietly’ guiding EU policy on some of the biggest issues of our day, including ‘stem cell research, meat consumption, food waste, Dolly the Sheep, GM crops, and the range of issues that summon up bands of outraged activists into chilly fields to chain themselves to outcrops of nature’.

They go by the acronym EGE (European Group on Ethics), and their mandate is to advise the Commission on ethical questions, either at the request of the Commission or on its own initiative (Article 2). And in true EU style, ‘the EGE's working sessions shall be private’ (Article 4.3) and ‘the EGE shall adopt its own Rules of Procedure’ (Article 4.7).

And the EU’s website does not conceal the fact that these 15 ‘experts’ have been hand-picked by one man: ‘They are appointed by the President of the European Commission on the basis of their individual expertise, and they are experts in disciplines such as science, jurisprudence, philosophy and theology.’ They will advise the Commission for the next four years on every important scientific pursuit and ethical consideration. And their deliberations are in secret and they can make up the rules as they go along.

If the President appoints them, he alone becomes the arbiter of what is right and wrong; what is permissible and what is prohibited; what is good and what is evil. His criteria for selection are not disclosed, but these ‘techno-moral custodians’ are dominated by scientists, and, as Dr Rotherham observes, specifically exclude ‘general moral philosophers’.

Make of that what you will.

UPDATE: Guido and the Times are both running with the Downing St. backs Miliband for the post of EU foreign minister story - 'clearing the way for one of [Brown's] protégés to be Labour’s next leader'. Ed Balls maybe? Heaven forfend...

Fire Walk With Me

2009-10-30T19:53:00.003Z

Click here for the famous David Bowie scene
from Fire Walk With Me.

Dark Night Of The Soul

2009-10-30T15:50:00.009Z

What would you get if Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse, David Lynch and a group of other respected musicians were to join forces and create an audio-visual project across the musical spectrum? Why, Dark Night of the Soul of course - a 13-track album complete with a 100-page booklet of art. It's well worth a listen. However, due to legal issues of some sort or other, the music isn't going to be released, and it's highly unlikely that it ever will be so don't feel guilty about downloading it. The CD in the case is blank, and the sleeve-text hints that you should find it online anyway. Click here for the .rar file, or here for the torrent if you prefer. The official website is here. You can find a range of reviews at Metacritic.

Recollections Of Hull During Half A Century

2009-10-30T10:21:00.027Z

Several years ago I came across a mouldering old book entitled Recollections of Hull During Half a Century - the memoirs of the Rev. James Sibree, published in Hull by A. Brown & Sons, 1884. It begins with Sibree accepting an invitation to visit Hull 'with a view to the formation of an additional Congregational church in a new part of the town,' and then he goes on to describe his 26-hour coach journey from London to Hull on the afternoon of July 8th 1831. On seeing Hull for the first time, from 'a small and inconvenient steam-boat,' he writes that 'the sun having gone down, and the rain falling copiously, the view of the town was much obscured, and my first impression was very unfavourable.' (Little has changed). He adds that he 'disliked the town. The flatness of the country palled on my spirit. My letters to my mother were dated, "From the fag-end of the earth.'' I could see nothing like the hills and dales, the glades and forests of my native Somerset. But He who "fixes the bounds of every man's habitation," and holds in His hands the mysterious threads of our existence, had determined this to be my home.'

Here are a couple of extracts from the 'Public Men and Politicians' chapter, in which Sibree describes some of the more colourful local characters:

Among those who disturbed the peace of the authorities was James Acland, a stranger, but whose name will be long remembered. he had arrived in Hull about the same time as myself, and commenced business as a public agitator. This man managed to keep the town's people in a turmoil for nearly three years. He attacked every institution, and almost every individual member of each institution; but to make war against the Corporation of the town seemed to be his chief aim. He was a fluent speaker, and could sway the passions of the mob. He published a weekly paper, copies of which were eagerly purchased. It was called The Hull Portfolio. The cry of "corruption" was ever upon his lips, and he succeeded in bringing the citizens of this hitherto quiet old town to the verge of rebellion. Things were in so alarming a state that in the month of November there were no less than eight hundred special constables sworn in to preserve the peace. The Corporation prosecuted him for libel. When some of the writs were issued against him he barricaded his house to prevent the entrance of the Sheriff's officers, and when night came he walked out for exercise, and was always accompanied by a huge black dog for protection. My space will not allow any further reference to the career in Hull of this "pestilent fellow," but only to add in the words of our latest historian: "On the 1st of October, 1834, he wrote from Hull Gaol, asking his followers, if any were left, for assistance in his time of need. But the day was passed; his friends had become his enemies; the mask had fallen; the chain was broken; and Acland's 'occupation' was gone. His doing here, if given in detail, would fill a whole volume."

There was another orator of less note in the early days of Reform, who was a great favorite with the Hull rowdies, known as General Jarvis. He was a creature of diminutive size, round-faced and plump, and of no particular occupation in life. He imagined himself to bear a great resemblance to Napoleon Buonaparte. On all public occasions, especially those connected with the election of Members of Parliament, he presented himself to give his opinion on the merits of the several candidates, and which he did with considerable fluency, not frequently unattended with a degree of sarcasm. His point of vision, generally, was a lamp-post; and when this was not available for an harangue, some of his friends and admirers would lift him up, and give him the benefit of their shoulders. Sometimes a rush would be made by the party opposed to his views in politics, when he would be handed head over head, from one strong arm to another, till he was put down out of reach of the enemy.

UPDATE: I might put up some more extracts from the Recollections at a later date. If you happen to be interested, you can read a humorous anecdote told by 'General' Jarvis at this site: the full text of Bygone England: Social Studies In Its Historic Byways & Highways by William Andrews, published in 1892. It starts at the bottom of p. 222 (about three-quarters of the way down).

Taxation As Poetry

2009-10-29T15:38:00.005Z

Click here for Bishop Hill's amusing tax-related doggerel.

On Climate-Change

2009-10-29T00:34:00.012Z

Bill Emmot's article in the Times on the subject of climate-change is one of the more reasonable ones I've read. I am a 'climate change' sceptic, I admit - in fact I'll proudly shout it from the rooftops if you like. I'm not going to go into the specifics of how the data-sets that the entire argument is based on have been corrupted and misinterpreted because Devil's Kitchen have already done that for me, in forensic detail, here. If that's not enough to convince you then you can take a look at Bishop Hill's analysis - you really should. But, before you accuse me of being in the pay of the Evil Capitalist Overlords, let me say this - just because the science behind climate-change alarmism is false doesn't mean that we should pollute and consume with wanton abandon. For obvious reasons we shouldn't dump chemicals in our rivers or cut down the rainforests or whatever. But there are a number of things that have contributed to the current mindset of the modern consumer that can help explain how this wastefulness and lack of respect for the Earth has come about. There is Christianity (which I was defending only yesterday!) for one, because it has traditionally taught that natural resources are there for man's exploitation; then there's ruthless Thatcherite turbo-capitalism; creeping urbanisation, the rise of technology and the resulting distancing from the natural world; apathy; declining standards of education; the list goes on. As one commenter on Devil's Kitchen points out, the trouble is that environmentalism and green issues are becoming increasingly politicised, and that to undermine alarmist assertions would make the world ignore them once again. Sadly, once scientific argument collides with political spin then it's bound to be drawn into the distortions and power-struggles and corruption endemic to politics. So just have some common sense, people. Don't waste food and water and electricity, don't take plastic bags from the shops if you can avoid it etc. etc. But don't start hooting about carbon footprints and cow-flatulence and screaming that the end of the world is nigh either, or my shoe will find your rear end.

Ghost Of Love

2009-10-29T00:06:00.002Z

So strange, what love does...

Rabbits

2009-10-28T20:46:00.006Z

In a nameless city
deluged by a continuous rain,
three rabbits live with a fearful mystery.

Rabbits - Episode One

We Live Inside A Dream...

2009-10-28T14:07:00.015Z

I've had a fondness for Kazuo Ishiguro's work since I first picked up a copy of The Unconsoled a few years ago. Labyrinthine, sinister and surreal, it was the closest I've ever felt in waking life to being inside a dream. All of his books have that unmistakable Ishiguro-ness of the plainest language crackling with repressed emotion, especially The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, but in The Unconsoled this understated approach is dominated by the intrusion of the surreal in a style very much akin to Haruki Murakami and Franz Kafka: the world is ordinary, yet subject to the strangest distortions: short roads take hours to walk down, normal conversations lead to obscure requests and demands, insignificant events become hugely important and the objects of much anxiety... Ishiguro's latest work, the short-story collection Nocturnes, is in this same tradition. Subtitled Five Stories of Music & Nightfall, this provides a good indication of the book's stylistic and thematic direction - classical music features prominently in Ishiguro's writing and Nocturnes is no different. In these five loosely-intertwined stories music functions as a kind of extended emotional dimension and Ishiguro looks at how the lost and lonely relate to it and each other from their surreal existence. 'Crooner', the story of an Eastern European man who meets his deceased mother's favourite singer in Venice is worth the price of the volume alone. Pick up a copy if you have the opportunity, and remember, we live inside a dream...

Doubleplusungood

2009-10-28T11:16:00.014Z

It's a bright cold day in October, and the clocks are striking thirteen. The Times is reporting this morning that the authority to 'search homes, seize cash, freeze bank accounts and confiscate property will be given to town hall officials and civilian investigators employed by organisations as diverse as Royal Mail, the Rural Payments Agency and Transport for London. The measure, being pushed through by Alan Johnson [the Home Secretary] comes into force next week and will deploy some of the most powerful tools available to detectives against fare dodgers, families in arrears with council tax and other minor offenders.'

Erm, is this even necessary? What's wrong with the existing channels? I don't remember voting for this - do the public get any say in this at all? Where will it end? Who exactly, other than the state itself, believes the state should have these powers and will use them wisely? It doesn't have the best track record: anyone remember poor old Walter Wolfgang, who was ejected from the 2005 Labour conference for heckling, and refused re-entry under newly-passed anti-terror legislation? These new powers will not be used to tackle crime, but to punish those who embarrass the government. And if a council jobsworth ever tries to get in to my house they'll have my boot up their arse, so help me God.

If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. ---Orwell, 1984

Rosa Canina

2009-10-28T10:34:00.007Z

Look, I'm growing
out of your left eye, snagging
your retina with little thorns,
rooting behind your frontal lobes.

What can you see
through the hundred pink tongues,
now you've a pupil who speaks
perfume, attracts bees?

On Nazir-Ali

2009-10-28T00:12:00.015Z

I find it difficult to decide whether I like Michael Nazir-Ali or not - at times he seems wise, at others a raving loon. This particular article in the Guardian was definitely written in a moment of sanity. Christianity is not without its flaws - in fact that's more than a bit of an understatement, millions have died in its name - but by and large it's served Britain well, as Nazir-Ali says. (Slavoj Žižek argues that the Pauline community of believers at its core was an early version of a 'revolutionary collective,' but that's another story). Nazir-Ali's right though: the BNP are trying to hijack Christianity, just as they are trying to hijack the military in the hopes of restoring Britain to a nostalgic fantasy-projection that never existed outside of an Agatha Christie novel. They needn't bother. Not only is their plan impossible, but even if by some freak accident they ever achieved power they'd actually have to govern the country, and without a coherent system of thought they'd be reactionary, incompetent and loathed, just like the incumbent lot. They wouldn't even last a month.

Nazir-Ali is also correct to point out that in the absence of what he calls a Christian ethos in our society, 'multiculturalism was invented, which has led to separate lives and segregated communities.' It's extremely refreshing that a public figure is at last saying this openly without resorting to feints and dodges to hide the truth - doing that only reinforces the belief that race and nationality are taboo subjects and must never be mentioned, and that obvious untruth infuriates the masses. Why should they be taboo subjects? Back in the Venerable Bede's time, there was no Scotland, Wales or Ireland... or England for that matter - there was only Britannia (mainland Britain) and Hibernia (Ireland). According to Bede's History, and contrary to what Nick Griffin appears to believe, there were also in fact several distinct and established racial groups: the English, the Britons, the Scots, the Picts and the Latins.* We are all mongrels: there is no racial purity.

*For more information on this I recommend The World of Bede by Peter Hunter Blair. It's very readable and back in print.

Quelle Différence

2009-10-27T18:42:00.019Z

Reading Orwell's 'Literature and the Left' (first published in Tribune, 4th June 1943 and available now in Penguin's Orwell & Politics), I get a very clear sense of not only how much Orwell loved literature, but of how he lived up to the Confucian ideal of humaneness - as Confucius said: 'the small man is partisan, the gentleman has universal sympathies.' In other words, his superiority to the political classes of today is self-evident. Whether you approve of his politics or not, the centre of gravity of his thought was always weighted towards the ethical and that's undoubtedly a quality that's worthy of respect. Anyhow, I doubt he'd be very pleased with this: a YouGov poll (Wales-only) that has Labour on 35% and the Tories on 31% - something that hasn't happened since 1983. There's also a new ComRes poll that says two-thirds of voters back the Tories' plans to shrink the state - this I like the sound of. Who knows, maybe revolution is in the air...

...or then again, maybe not. Whatever - perhaps Georges Bataille was right when he said that 'the idea of revolution is intoxicating, but what happens afterward? The world will remake itself and remedy what oppresses us today to take some other form tomorrow.' And perhaps that bloke down the pub was right when he said 'Labour and Tory - they're two cheeks of the same filthy arse.'

UPDATE: Check out this well-thought-out and well-researched article which examines in detail how the government's 'evidence-based policy making' is in actual fact 'policy-based evidence making.'

I Am The Arm

2009-10-27T16:16:00.003Z

The man behind the mask is looking for the book with the pages torn out.
He's going towards the hiding place...

Free Speech/Hate Speech

2009-10-27T12:16:00.008Z

Guido's post 'Freedom of Speech Includes 'Hate Speech'' is spot on and there is little to add so I'm going to reproduce most of it here:

Pauline Howe, 67, wrote a letter to Norwich Council objecting to a local gay pride march. She used the word “sodomites” and objected to “perverted sexual practices”. A tad old fashioned, something you would perhaps be embarrassed by if your aunt blurted it out at Christmas.

Subsequently two police officers turned up on her doorstep to warn her that she had committed a “hate crime”. Guardianistas cheer on the police.

The comic Jimmy Carr told an audience of 2,500 at the Manchester Apollo: “Say what you like about servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we’re going to have a f*****g good paralympic team in 2012.” Daily Mail leader writers are outraged.

Get a grip. There is no right to not be offended.

If somebody offends you in your own house, you can throw them out. if somebody offends you in a public space, without inciting violence or defaming you, tough. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words should not be legislated.

It may be ill-mannered, it may be vulgar and offensive, but it should not be illegal. People going to a Jimmy Carr show can’t expect not to wince and laugh [...] People need to grow up and keep a sense of proportion, or else life could get very boring and sterile.

Abandoned Britain

2009-10-26T16:47:00.009Z

Photographic projects
of derelict hospitals, schools, labs etc.
Click here.

Domestic Extremism?

2009-10-26T15:11:00.030Z

This story in today's Grauniad is highly worrying in its implications: if police are indeed 'gathering the personal details of thousands of activists who attend political meetings and protests, and storing their data on a network of nationwide intelligence databases', then what does this mean for our right to privacy, our freedom of speech and political expression? What are the police doing with this information? Who has access to it, and is it secure? Who knew about it? Are they right to collect this data even though no crime has been committed? How long will it be stored for? Have the police decided to collect it themselves, or are they acting under instruction? If so, who is the final authority? Are there safeguards against abuse? Do the police (and the government) exist to serve us, or vice versa? How concerned should we be that the police consider protesters as 'domestic extremists'? Are claims that we are sleepwalking towards a police-state justified? What is the real agenda here? What can we do about it?

UPDATE: A few interesting links here for your perusal: (1) How police rebranded lawful protest as 'domestic extremism', (2) How innocent people can get themselves removed from the police's DNA database, and (3) Stop the database state! Click here for the NO2ID website.

Otherness & Immigration

2009-10-25T20:54:00.016Z

Since a certain deranged yet minor political party has been dominating the news for the past week or so, I thought I'd share with you this short lecture by my favourite Slovenian philosopher from a conference called 'The Other Among Us: Otherness & Immigration' which took place at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, on 8th March 2007. Today's ICM poll for the News of the World says that two-thirds of the public think that LibLabCon have no 'credible policies' on immigration - admittedly the sample size is small (504), but it is still rather telling, and ICM do tend to be one of the more reliable pollsters. Personally I agree with those two-thirds, though I think the problem isn't so much change itself as the rate of change... Anyway here it is. It's long-winded and digressive but (probably) worth it.

Enjoy.

Jisei: Japanese Death Poetry

2009-10-25T18:47:00.009Z

On a journey, ill:
my dream goes wandering
over withered fields.

---Basho

This final scene I'll not see
to the end... my dream
is fraying.

---Choko

Cargoless,
bound heavenward,
ship of the moon.

---Dohaku

My companion in the skies
of death,
a cuckoo.

---Fufu

The snow of yesterday
that fell like cherry petals
is water once again.

---Gozan

Tender winds above the snow
melt many kinds
of suffering.

---Kyutaro

I cleansed the mirror
of my heart... now it reflects
the moon.

---Renseki

Read more here.

55

2009-10-25T15:38:00.007Z

By the splitting, spilling, fly-crazing
Honeypot buds

By the calf's drunken eye
As he butts his mammy's hot udder
With milk-plastered face, the milk unspooling
From his foamy wet muzzle as he pauses
To weigh up the watcher

By the hills of such mass
Of such poise it is unthinkable
And they seem moored at a haze-thought

You steppingstone from nothingness

Across the shoreless

Ahaaa!

2009-10-25T11:59:00.004Z

I'm going nowhere Lynn. Quite literally, I'm on the ring-road. Third time round. I've just been into B&Q for a bag of tungsten-tipped screws. Never gonna use 'em. Never gonna use 'em.

Click here for the full scripts of I'm Alan Partridge, Series One.

The River

2009-10-24T17:30:00.015+01:00

The River [1996] is a series of short, reflective duets between Norwegian pianist Ketil Bjørnstad and the American cellist David Darling, but although it's a kind of offshoot from a grander, more tumultuous work (The Sea I and II) it doesn't feel like it's been rushed and neither does it sound like a collection of inferior avant-garde B-sides. It seems more considered in fact: there's a Zen-like calm in the piano's rather austere sound that complements the underswell of the cello perfectly. For some reason it makes me think of rainy forests at twilight and gleaming, polished wood. Some of the tracks are based on music of the late Renaissance that has been 'updated' to sound modern - more information on that can be found at the record label's website here. I'd never have noticed if I hadn't read about it - it sounds completely contemporary. Anyway it comes highly recommended, particularly the last half of the album. It's night music par excellence.

Try it

Buy it

Lacanian Jokes

2009-10-24T15:36:00.003+01:00

Special offer - ten for the price of one. Limited time only.
Available here.

I See It Feelingly: Orghast At Persepolis

2009-10-24T12:30:00.013+01:00

In 1971, the theatre and film director Peter Brook and the English poet Ted Hughes worked together on a project to create a play that was to be performed entirely in an artificially-constructed sensory language. It was eventually performed at night, in the open, at the ruins of Persepolis in Iran. In his excellent book on the development of the play (and the language, both titled Orghast) A. C. H. Smith tells how Brook and Hughes experimented with sound as they searched for a pure kind of language, a language 'purged of the haphazard associations of English, which continually tries to supplant experience and truth with the mechanism of its own autonomous life.' They were after something primal and instinctual, something that could be understood without words.

Smith goes on to explain that the sounds for physical actions and simple nouns - the iconic level of language - 'could be found onomatopoeically: for instance, three kinds of eating were expressed as GR - 'eat', KR - 'devour', and ULL - 'swallow.'' The next level is the indexical level, 'one at which the object or action may be inferred from the evidence presented.' Hughes uses the examples of MAMA and DADA to represent this level: 'the meaning [of MAMA] is inferred from the sucking shape of the lips' and DADA means 'that person over there, who doesn't give me food, is strange and comes to represent the outside world.' Smith then says that it is the third level of language, the abstract ideas of the symbolic, that was the most troublesome. Eventually, Hughes and Brook managed to create this vocabulary by adapting sounds from the iconic level: for example, 'the word for 'darkness,' as inside a body, was 'BULLORGA,'' which was developed from ULL, meaning 'swallow.' According to Hughes,

the deeper into language one goes, the less visual/conceptual its imagery, and the more audial/visceral/muscular its system of tensions. [....] In other words, the deeper into language one goes, the more dominated it becomes by purely musical modes, and the more dramatic it becomes - the more unified with total states of being and with the expressiveness of physical action. Visualization in language is at odds with immediately expressive dramatic action in that it is the conceptual substitute for physical action.

Fascinating stuff.

Smith, A. C. H. 1975. Orghast At Persepolis. London: Eyre Methuen (pp. 43-45)

Post-Question Time YouGov Poll

2009-10-24T10:56:00.012+01:00

CON: 40% (-1)
LAB: 27% (-3)
LIB: 19% (+2)
BNP: 3% (+1)

Asked how likely people would be to vote BNP in a future local, general or European election, 66% said there were no circumstances at all. 15% said it was "possible," which I suspect is more of a "never say never answer." More significant are the 7% who would definitely or probably consider voting BNP at some point in the future.

What has changed was attitudes to the BBC's decision to invite Griffin onto Question Time. At the weekend 63% thought it was right, 23% wrong. Now the balance of opinion has shifted further in favour of the BBC's decision, 74% thinking it was right, and only 11% wrong.

Source: UK Polling Report and politicalbetting.com

UPDATE: Peter Ould has written a brief (and worrying) article entitled 'Where Are The BNP Votes Coming From?' It's worth having a look at. His personal blog can be found here.

Curtains

2009-10-24T00:13:00.034+01:00

What is it with David Lynch and the red curtains? Are they menacing or benign? Whatever they are and whatever they represent, they're at their most prominent and symbolism-laden in the series Twin Peaks [1990-1991] and the subsequent spin-off film Fire Walk With Me [1992], where they served as the backdrop to The Waiting Room - a peculiar interspace where a sinister red-suited dwarf (The Man From Another Place) speaks in riddles and dances to mellow jazz. According to Lynch (unfortunately I can't find the source anywhere) the curtains 'are both hiding and revealing. Sometimes it's so beautiful that they're hiding, it gets your imagination going. But in the theatre, when the curtains open, you have this fantastic euphoria that you're going to see something new, something will be revealed.'

Well, in that same spirit, allow me to present to you the eerily beautiful black and white photography of Vera Lutter, who I'm sure is a Lynchian at heart. She tends to draw her inspiration from desolate urban landscapes (who doesn't?) but that aside there is something especially entrancing about her work. She uses pinhole cameras, small and large, and she even converts whole rooms into them. The long exposure times give her photographs that luminous, translucent, spectral quality reminiscent of Fay Godwin's photos of the Yorkshire moors... According to the Gagosian Gallery, in Lutter's art 'fleeting moments become nearly invisible, their traces overshadowed and erased by the immutable, massive structures that remain, but whose ultimate destruction is as inevitable as the continuing progression of modernism itself.' ...Yeah, if you say so, but the photos are very pretty and fascinatingly Lynch-like so check them out if you can be arsed.

(The above photo is titled Inside Looking In, Studio VII: Aug. 15 - Sept. 12, 2003
3 panels, 229 x 427cm)

Sycamore Trees

2009-10-23T21:46:00.008+01:00

And I'll see you,
And you'll see me,
And I'll see you in the branches that blow...
In the breeze,
I'll see you in the trees...
Under the sycamore trees...

That Question Time

2009-10-23T16:06:00.047+01:00

Well, the dust has settled and the latest controversial Question Time is over, and just like every other controversial Question Time it was anticlimactic to say the least. Was the much-hyped appearance of Nick Griffin, the far-right* MEP and leader of the British National Party, really worth all the fuss? I hope Auntie Beeb understands that she made a mistake in building the programme around Griffin: by abandoning the usual format for one controversial guest (with the full co-operation of LibLabCon), she legitimised the BNP's position as the anti-politics party - the very act she was so keen to avoid, and could've avoided had she stuck to the code of impartiality that led her to invite Griffin onto Question Time in the first place. Where were the questions on the postal strike? On economic policy? On education? Setting the BNP up to undergo a Stalinist show-trial (however loathsome they are and however much they may deserve it) will not dissuade those voters who may be tempted by them, but it will, unfortunately, reinforce their perception of the BNP as martyrs to an Establishment that only looks out for its own interests and that treats the public with more contempt each day.

The chattering classes must wake up to the fact that the BNP are a symptom (not in the Lacanian sense!) of the wider failure of our political and parliamentary system, and that race is not the primary issue here. Britain, in spite of its (at times) bullish Anglo-Saxon mentality, is an extremely tolerant country, and for all his flaws the Tory MEP Dan Hannan is correct to say that 'the civil unrest that [Enoch Powell] forecast, and that many feared in 1968, didn’t materialise,' and that 'Britain assimilated a large population with an ease that few countries have matched.' Immigration is a good thing. But at the same time, the public's reasonable concerns about Labour's failed immigration policy (one recent example here) and its adverse effects on public services, race-relations, community life, tax, crime, the economy etc. cannot just be dismissed as 'racism.' The BNP profit precisely because our politicians never view the issue of immigration in terms of resources but always in terms of race. We must not let our politicians get away with doing this or the abandoned working-class will turn to Griffin and the threat of fascism will squat over us, as Anne Sexton would say, 'poised forever like a centrepiece.'

*or far-left if you prefer, considering the BNP's economic policy...

UPDATE: Hmm, I wonder what former Labour advisor Andrew Neather's motives are for revealing this? It's extremely frightening if it's true.

UPDATE II: Neather's 'clarification' is here. Again, hmmm.

Žižek On Duchamp's Fountain

2009-10-22T20:30:00.005+01:00

In what sense does Duchamp's urinal stand for an act of creativity? At the level of its immediate material content, there is of course, nothing creative about it; Duchamp just took an ordinary, vulgar object and displayed it as a work of art. His true act of creativity happened prior to this: in implicitly redefining the space of the work of art, the rules determining this space, in such a way that the displaying of a urinal can count as a work of art (or rather, in forcing us, the spectators, to redefine the space of art in such a way that we are able to perceive the urinal as a work of art). What this means of course, is that we become aware of the role of the (empty) space as such: being an object of art is not an immediate property of an object but its 'reflexive determination' (Hegel). [....] People do not treat an object as a work of art because it is in itself a work of art; it is a work of art because people treat it as one.

Indeed.

Extract taken from a footnote in Organs Without Bodies: On Deleuze & Consequences by Slavoj Žižek, 2004. New York: Routledge (p. 149)

Welcome!

2009-09-30T21:54:00.001+01:00

Welcome to objet petit a, a precious item in a worthless box. Stay tuned...