Instead of relying on a ‘parent knows best’ attitude towards kid-wrangling, Jay Heinrichs taught his children the principles of rhetoric, and how to argue properly. He found it removed a lot of the tension around the house.

George, who took longer than Dorothy did to talk, was at first a devotee of what rhetoricians call argument by the stick. After every fight I’d ask him, ‘Did you get the other kid to agree with you?’ For years he considered that a thoroughly stupid question, and maybe it was. But eventually this question made sense to him: In the world of rhetoric, argument by the stick is no argument. It never persuades, it only inspires revenge. To disagree reasonably, a child must learn the three basic tools of argument. I got them straight from Aristotle, hence the Greek labels: logos, ethos, and pathos. […] Forcing my kids to be logical forced them to connect what they wanted with the reasons they gave.

I suppose I love this idea so much because it relies on the simple principle that if you treat your kids as rational, capable human beings, that’s how they act.

Costigan Quist delves deeper into the aforelinked Telegraph story which claimed the UK was the ‘Violent Crime Capital of Europe’.

There’s no perfect measure of crime. The British Crime Survey is almost certainly the best for what it measures, but it doesn’t measure everything, and it isn’t very good at spotting trends in rare crimes.

Reported crime is not only affected by the reporting rate, but also by changes in definitions and procedures. What’s absolutely clear though, is that the Conservative researchers deliberately misled.

He’s right, of course – I ought to have included a disclaimer to the effect that not only should you not believe everything¹ you read in the papers, but also the stats came from the Conservative Party and all the usual caveats apply.

But you already knew that, didn’t you?

1. Or anything?

Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes) wrote a piece for ‘Comment Is Free’ today in which he turns away from the politicians (”[they] are what they are”) and sets his sights firmly upon the lobby journalists and political reporters. The whole thing makes for entertaining reading, but this paragraph particularly caught my eye:

I can’t help but think of the line in the film Gladiator about Maximus Decimus Meridius, ‘Today I saw a slave become more powerful than the emperor of Rome’. If you look at Smeargate, it was the internet that enabled a determined blogger to expose Downing Street in a way that the more compliant lobby hacks in Westminster were unwilling to do. The more of us there are, the more the corrupt have to fear.

I can’t help but think I’ve heard that before… Cheers, Guido – ‘tis an honour.

Analysis of figures from the European Commission showed a 77 per cent increase in murders, robberies, assaults and sexual offences in the UK since Labour came to power.

A tip of the hat to patently

UPDATE: Remember, as with all statistics – your mileage may vary.

An interview with Max Gudey, who has created a new web service called MyOws¹, launching later this month. The website offers ‘free registration and management of your copyrights’. Here’s him explaining how it works:

At the core, Myows is similar to posting a letter to yourself, and using the post-office’s datestamp to prove you had the work before anyone else. The problem with this method, referred to as ‘the poor man’s copyright’, is that it doesn’t provide irrefutable proof if presented in court for a simple reason: It’s fairly easy to ‘unglue’ and ‘re-glue’ a sealed envelope.

In the new millenium, I reckoned we could do something similar but online, so we built an application that allows you to upload your work, in any file format. The file then gets stored securely and datestamped. You also immediately get a certificate stating that you uploaded the file at a given date, down to the minute. So if someone copies your work after you’ve uploaded it to your Myows account, we can prove that you were in possession of it before them. But Myows doesnt stop at that.

Speaking as a complete Intellectual Property layman, this seems like one of those ‘I can’t believe nobody had thought of that before’ ideas. It could prove to be a great help in digging through messes like the Jon Engle thing a few months back.

1. Apparently the name means ‘MY Original WorkS’, no idea how it’s pronounced…

The third series of the sci-fi show – which began on BBC Three before moving to BBC Two – will now be shown on consecutive days on BBC One.

Only five episodes, shown over just one week. John Barrowman seems a little unhappy they weren’t allowed to do more. My first reaction to the trailer, though, was that it looks like they’ve got a much bigger budget this season.

The first series of Torchwood was a bit of a mess, but it really picked up in the second. I’m looking forward to next week now.

Wow. Just wow. Earlier today, Fraser Nelson on Coffee House wrote a post about Ed Balls lying about debt on Radio 4. Ed Balls contacted him, it seems, in something of a fit of anger – demanding the original post be taken down. Instead, Fraser went ahead and wrote a full rebuttal of both Ed Balls’ lies and his dodgy scare tactics, culminating in this paragraph:

If you’re reading this, Ed (and I suspect you will be) then we have a serious point to make. Five years ago, you could lie like this on the radio and get away with it. Space is tight in newspapers, no one would devote hundreds of words and graphs – as we did – to expose a lie for what is. But the world has changed now. Blogging has brought new, hyper scrutiny. Blogs have infinite space, and people with endless energy, to expose political lying – no matter how small. Your claims can be instantly counter-checked, by anyone. If you stretch the truth, you can be exposed – by anyone. And if you plan to base a whole election campaign on a lie, as you apparently intend to do, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

Go read the whole post, it’s worth it.

Not sure what I like more, “I’m On Twitter” or “I Just Found a Site Called Pandora”.

Bloody fantastic video, though.

13-year-old trades his iPod for an old Sony Walkman for a week.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.

It’s amazing how much changes in a decade, isn’t it. Ten years ago, I had the marvellous honour of moving from my walkman to a MiniDisc player. Just imagine it – 70 minutes of music on a 3” square plastic disc!

Of course, now I’ll probably get 2.3 million comments about how I should have been around when we all carried pocket-sized vinyl record players with us, or something. Or had brass bands following us round everywhere who’d memorised all our favourite songs…

It happens to the best of us eventually, I suppose. Someone’s whispered in Charlotte’s ear that she could be the new Lib Dem PPC for Halifax. Coyly, she declines:

Amongst the many reasons why I would make a terrible PPC my personal favourite is this blog. Oh, it’ll take a day or so, but any campaign run by me could be derailed very quickly by finding a few choice quotes. Charlotte Gore wants to axe the welfare state! Charlotte Gore wants to cut spending! Charlotte Gore is pro Business and anti Union! Charlotte Gore wants to legalise drugs! Charlotte Gore thinks the BNP should be allowed on television! That’s just the start of it. There’s enough in this blog to kill any political career one hundred times over.

I agree with Constantly Furious. The lady doth protest too much.

She does brilliantly make the wider point, though, that our political system is utterly stymied by the fact that nobody can win by confidently standing forward and saying what they believe.

UPDATE: Costigan Quist has more, and is dead right. “Democracy stinks if Charlotte can’t contribute”

I don’t really care too much about the story, really. That headline, though, has something for everybody.

It is this: that there comes a time when the Sparrow of Opinion, having flown into the Great Hall of Blogging through the Window of Inspiration, must fly out again into the Night of Doing Something Else, as the Venerable Bede nearly said. I have said all that needs to be said, my best tales are all told that can be told here. Oh! better to close the gates on the Republic now before they rust where they stand.

Now, I know that’s only three blogs, and I know plenty of others are still going strong. I know Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes are still churning out 8 posts a day (although both have slowed, and neither are making major scoops). All three of those, however, are in the Top 50 political blogs – and I wouldn’t be surprised if their new-found silence is indicative of a wider trend. A definite calm, I would say, has come across the blogscape.

There’s a few good reasons that this could be happening, of course. Charles Arthur has had a pretty good go at blaming Twitter for the increasing decline of the ‘long tail’ of the blogosphere, and I certainly agree with him there. Comment (if not analysis) has begun to move away from blogs and onto Twitter – and indeed I am guilty of linking to things on Twitter and forgetting to mention them on here. He also quotes some New York Times research which suggests that 95% of blogs are withering on the vine – although I’m not convinced that this is something new. In my experience few new bloggers have the tenacity (or at least the belligerence) to make it past a few weeks of blogging.

I’d like to think that there’s an even better reason, though: I’d like to think that perhaps, just perhaps, everyone’s gone quiet because they’ve won.

Think about it: the driving force behind the success of the blogosphere in the UK has been the desire to break open the Westminster bubble; to force our Government, and our national press, to listen to the people, rather than endlessly circling around themselves. To expose the lies and the scandals at the heart of our political system.

And now we have¹. Victory is ours. The bloggers are being taken seriously, and the Government is on the run. What’s more, even the Opposition are scared of what’s happening. When If David Cameron becomes Prime Minister, he’s going to have a whole bag of hurt waiting for him, and the only response he can give is openness and transparency.

Reading between the lines of ‘Smeargate’ (can we really not have a better name) and the expenses scandal, we see Maximus Decimus Meridias removing his helmet and standing up to Commodus. We saw “a slave become more powerful than the Emperor of Rome”. We saw a few people sat at computers turning the Government into an object of ridicule.

I’d like to think that perhaps, just perhaps, the reason so many people have gone so quiet is that they know they’ve won, that they’re being listened to, and all we have left to do now is wait.

1. The royal ‘we’, of course

Costigan Quist looks at the evidence and asks a very sensible question:

If being “normal” weight is both less common and less healthy that being “overweight”, wouldn’t it make sense to re-work the classifications?

And, as someone with a BMI currently hovering round the low end of ‘overweight’¹, I fully endorse this idea.

1. Yeah, I actually had to look that up. I’m not big on the whole ‘health’ thing…

Charlie Jane Anders reviews Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’.

And the true genius of Transformers: ROTF is that Bay has put all of this excess of imagery and random ideas at the service of the most pandering movie genre there is: the summer movie. ROTF is like twenty summer movies, with unrelated storylines, smushed together into one crazy whole. You try in vain to understand how the pieces fit, you stare into the cracks between the narrative strands, until the cracks become chasms and the chasms become an abyss into which you stare until it looks deep into your own soul, and then you go insane.

Well worth reading to the end. This may be the best film review ever. Well, apart from Mark Kermode’s seminal tirade against Pirates of the Caribbean 3, of course.

Nieman Journalism Lab analyse the Guardian’s MP’s expenses crowdsourcing app¹.

If you are (like me) somebody who believes that the future of journalism lies in what normal, unpaid people are willing to do in the comfort of their living rooms, this story is a highly interesting (and exciting) one. I took great pleasure in summarising a number of expenses receipts when this came out, as, I imagine, did many other people. The fact that it has been carried out by a major newspaper suggests that they’re starting to recognise where their place will be.

It’s the future!

@lingmops

1. Which, come to think of it, I can’t believe I hadn’t linked to earlier

New York Times discussion on how President Obama’s ‘Open Government Dialogue’ website is dealing with some of the more ‘interesting‘ posts they receive from users.

The experience so far shows just how hard it is to allow all voices to be heard and still have a coherent discussion. When millions of Internet users are invited to discuss every regulation, how can any real work get done? On the other hand, why bother opening up the government if views that are outside the mainstream — as defined by the usual collection of lobbyists and think tank scholars — are summarily dismissed?

Webcameron’s ‘Open Blog’, which was way ahead of its time when it first began (and moved steadily backwards from there), suffered from regular invasions of quacks and weirdos who at various times seriously compromised the nature of the site. It’ll be interesting to see how (and if) Obama’s techies manage to deal with the problem. They’ve already used some of the same ideas as Webcameron, such as allowing users to vote posts up and down. The idea of users flagging ‘off-topic’ discussions to be moved to a separate part of the site is an interesting one, too.

Hopefully, it won’t end up with them simply deleting the whole site¹.

1. At this point, you must imagine me casting an extremely pointed look in David Cameron’s direction

Tom Harris:

I didn’t vote for Bercow, but I have no doubt he will be a good Speaker. In a democracy, those who lose the vote must accept the result. If the Tories refuse to do that, they will be exposed as having no respect, either for the House, or for democracy itself.

Indeed. An exceptionally poor show from Nadine Dorries, in particular (yeah, what else is new). I don’t see why some Tories are insisting on being childish over this Speaker’s election. I’m not sure ‘they started it’ is much of an excuse, either.

One of the features in the new iPhone software update is ‘Find My iPhone’, where anyone who has a MobileMe subscription¹ can go onto a website and find the current location of their phone. It’s really useful when somebody steals your phone:

Now, put yourself in the shoes of the iPhone thiever who will momentarily be entering the story. You might have told yourself, “Hey, free iPhone!” the night before. You might have seen the gently-threatening messages and ignored them, maybe even scoffed. Then the phone told you it was on Medill St. It talked to you in Spanish. And you saw three skinny white guys prowling in the street with a laptop computer open.

So you take off down the road, and to your shock and horror, the honkeys follow you. You stand at your local bus stop, expecting to lose them. And they converge on your location from across the intersection, the bald one with the laptop yelling and pointing at you. You probably think the angels of death have found you.

Don’t try this at home, of course…

1. Apple’s £60 a year suite of web tools and services

Blue Eyes’ position on the Iraq War is spookily similar to my own:

When the 45-minute claim was being bandied about I did not believe it. But when Tony Blair stood up and said that we must go to war, I took it on trust that, however undesirable it might be, it must be necessary. My flawed logic was based on the supposition that no leader of a free country in the 21st century would take his nation to war, would risk his citizens’ lives, would wish so much death, disaster and despair on a foreign land without good reason. Not even Bush’s Poodle would enter such a conflict lightly. And that turned out to be a fatal logic on my part. I have hated myself ever since for being so easily taken in. I console myself with the knowledge that I was not the only one, but it darkens my conscience nonetheless.

I’ve wanted to find the words to say exactly that myself for a long time. The Iraq war was, purely and simply, a betrayal of the trust of the people by their Prime Minister. Blair did to the office of the Prime Minister what Nixon did to the office of the President – but Blair did it with a bit more charm, and so he can get away with it.

The rather excellent cartoon by Steve Bell in today’s Guardian merges the two big stories of the day – the private Iraq enquiry and the redacted expense claims.

Along with this, they added tethering, the ability to connect a computer to the internet via the iPhone.

Tethering is an excellent feature, seen in other phones since time immemorial. Plug your iPhone into your laptop (or even connect to it with bluetooth) and hey presto, internet-to-go.

Perfect, indeed, for the discerning blogger who likes writing in coffee shops.

Bearing that in mind, I was (to say the least) fairly disappointed to learn that tethering isn’t automatically available to people who upgrade their phone to the latest operating system. Far from it, in fact, they have to specially request the ability to tether their phone from O₂. And, indeed, O₂ would like to charge them a minimum of £15 per month for the privilege of actually using the internet connection that comes with their phone price plan.

To put that figure in perspective, my monthly contract, including some amount of talk-time that I never use, is £30 per month. Adding tethering to my contract, for those few occasions when it would come in really useful to me, would increase my monthly spending by 50%.

Now, clearly, O₂ are a private company and are free to charge whatever they like for their services¹. They are also in the privileged position of being the exclusive carrier of the only phone I’m interested in owning, and having me tied down to another 8 months of contract.

Here’s three simple reasons, though, that the amount of money O₂ are asking for to allow tethering is quite simply ludicrous, and the whole situation is an utter, utter disappointment:

I use more data on the iPhone than I would on a computer

Typically, when I am bored and I pull out my iPhone, it’s to read blogs and check Twitter. I avoid writing lengthy blog posts or emails on it because I don’t really like writing without being able to see very much of the text².

The upshot of this is that the amount of data I use when procrastinating with my iPhone is not a lot different to the amount I use on a laptop. On the laptop I’ll sit happily writing and reading, taking up very little bandwidth at all. On the phone I’ll be constantly refreshing, looking for more things to read, using bandwidth constantly.

I’m willing to go out on a limb, in fact, and say that I think I’d use less data in coffee shops if I could use my laptop than I do when I’m only allowed to use my iPhone.

What about when I want to tether a WiFi connection?

Included in the O₂ iPhone price plan is access to the distributed network of Wireless Access Points called ‘The Cloud’. The majority of pubs, coffee shops and shopping centres I go in have The Cloud, and when I’m sat in them I can connect to the internet on my phone wirelessly.

Now, I’ve paid for that Wireless connection through my O₂ bill. Using it doesn’t use any of O₂‘s bandwidth. So why can’t I share it with my laptop? This seems utterly stupid, and utterly inconsistent.

But forget that, because next up is the biggest issue with the whole thing:

There’s no Pay-As-You-Go option

There’s no possibility, in O₂‘s world, for a la carte usage of tethering. Either you pay at least £15, every month, or tethering is blocked. You can’t enable it for a day, or pay for it only as much as you use it. This is a binary decision – on or off. £15; or no tethering.

I’d probably quite happily accept a system whereby if I wanted to use tethering I’d have to pay £2 for the day, and then have it cut off again the day after. Some months I might even end up spending more than £15 on that. The situations where I’d want tethering – in the coffee shop, on the train – are always the exception, not the rule, for me. The way O₂ are playing this, though, they’ll get no money out of me whatsoever. A Pay-As-You-Go option would have me reaching for my credit card this weekend.

This would be an all-round winner, and I’m gobsmacked that it isn’t an option. What are O₂ playing at, exactly.

I don’t usually get irritated about these things. When people complain about the huge upgrade prices on their phones I’m the first to point out that they signed their contract, they committed to a minimum term, they can face the consequences of it. The tethering situation, though, is really irritating me, because it just feels like I’m being needlessly prevented from using a really great feature that I’m willing to pay a reasonable price to use, seemingly for no reason other than the stubbornness of O₂.

Did I mention that I find that incredibly irritating?

1. Of course, the fact that the price plan is described as including ‘unlimited data’, and their principle objection to tethering is increased data usage, sticks in the throat somewhat…
2. As a side note, I actually rather like the iPhone’s keyboard, which receives criticism from Blackberry fans. I particularly like its excellent auto-correction, which is spookily accurate 95% of the time

I’m lost for words.

Daring Fireball

Coffee House reckon Margaret Beckett may have the Speakership in the bag. That would, of course, leave me living in the safest Labour seat in the country.

I can’t say I’m too pleased with that particular turn of events.

I gave up on anonymity quite a while back (before I even started this blog) reasoning that at least if everyone knows my name I don’t have to worry about the possibility of people finding it out. It removes a little novelty, but it also diffuses any interest people might have in my identity.

One thing that’s always fascinated me, though, is the correlation between identity and readership in blogging. Looking through the Wikio top 20 political blogs, I can only see three¹ whose chief author/editor’s name I do not know.

There are plenty of successful pseudonymous bloggers, of course – but it doesn’t take much digging to find the real names of the bloggers behind Guido Fawkes, or Dizzy Thinks, or most of the other highly successful names in blogging. Rumour has it that even Devil’s Kitchen has an alter-ego with a rather more common name, though I of course wouldn’t dream of mentioning it for fear of the Satanic wrath such an action might engender.

It seems the only bloggers able to attain any great level of success without their names becoming a matter of public record are the ones who work inside our public services, who feel they must remain anonymous out of respect for the people mentioned in the anecdotes, which often cast a rather negative light on British public services. Out of fear that their words would be used against his constabulary. Out of, I’m sure, fear that writing hard-hitting and controversial critiques of their employer under their own name would see them at home nursing a shiny new P45 before you could say ‘free speech’.

The Outing of NightJack

The Orwell Prize winning police blogger NightJack fell into that rare mould, and now The Times, claiming to be doing a ‘public service’², have identified him, and his constabulary.

At this point, though, the only decent thing for you to to do is to go and read the proclamation of the People’s Republic on the matter, for clearly Alix Mortimer’s powers of articulation do far exceed my own³. Particularly this bit:

And now a newspaper has ruined the career of one of them. Because they want a good headline, and probably because they’re jealous of his audience reach and of the unstoppable advance of new media in general. They have ruined. His. Career. And this is not a man highly placed in public service, mark you. Not a man caught out in any wrongdoing. Just a man who wrote down what he thought.

Clearly, shame on The Times for forcing this man to identify himself and the people he has written about. Double shame on The Times, of course, when their actions are put in contrast with a piece on NightJack from The Independent nearly a month ago, which said:

Jack Night’s identity is known to The Independent but we have agreed not to reveal anything apart from the fact that he is a detective constable, aged in his mid-40s. His force area and his real name remain a secret.

I know it’s not just me who thinks this is horribly sad. It also sets a very ugly precedent – I don’t imagine Dr Crippen or Winston Smith slept quite so soundly as usual last night, nor any other public service blogger. I note with great sadness that Sierra Charlie’s blog has disappeared too, although I don’t know for certain when that happened (last post I read was on the 9th of June). If it’s connected to the naming of NightJack then triple shame on The Times.

The message The Times are sending appears to be quite clear: if you blog anonymously, and talk about real life, you’d better not be successful – because if you are, we’ll ruin your life. And just to make that point abundantly clear, the NightJack himself wrote a piece in today’s Times⁴:

My blog is gone now, deleted, slowly melting away post by post as it drops off the edge of the Google cache. The Police Dependants’ Trust is a few thousand pounds better off which may be the only good thing to have come out of this. My family life has changed in ways that they did not want and that is down to me. I deeply and bitterly regret the damage that will be done to the reputation of Lancashire Constabulary, that is also down to me. Next to that, my own career prospects are trivial.

In Defence of The Times

I can’t deny that this whole thing had me fizzing with anger. How dare they, I thought. How very dare they. What has NightJack ever done to them?

Unfortunately, though, that’s just about where the criticism of The Times ends. With shame, and bitter words, and accusations of their utter hypocrisy in refusing to name their ‘sources’ but delighting in exposing a blogger. Far from the creeping totalitarianism that Alix Mortimer alludes to, the actions of The Times are the actions of a free agent, exercising its right to free speech – even if that free speech means revealing the identity of a man we’d rather not know. Whether motivated by jealousy, or mean-spiritedness, or simply the belief that it will sell more newspapers, The Times are absolutely entitled to investigate and identify whomever they wish.

The idea of revealing the identities of those who would rather not be identified is hardly one that’s alien to bloggers, either. It was a blogger who revealed the identity of the killers of Baby P, running the risk of prejudicing a further case against one of them. It was a blogger who revealed the men in Number 10 who were spreading rumours and falsehoods about the opposition to the press. It was a blogger who went against a D-Notice and revealed that Prince Harry was fighting in Afghanistan, forcing him to return when what he wanted to do was fight for his country. That many bloggers “would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity if someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them” is absolutely true, but those same bloggers balk at the law intervening to protect anonymous sources in the papers, or Government enquiries being kept secret, or criminals in ongoing trials being referred to only by pseudonym.

The flow of information that the internet has provided is not one way. If we want information to be free, we have to accept that these are the real consequences – and if we want to know all about the people who work inside our public services, we’re going to have to accept that others can and will discover and reveal their identities.

And therein, I think, we find the reason for the aforementioned correlation between a known identity and readership. You simply cannot attain so high a readership under a pseudonym without people being interested in, and discovering, your identity.

Freedom isn’t just the freedom to do whatever you want. It’s also the acceptance that others are allowed to do whatever they want. The Times may have acted shamefully, and out of spite and hypocrisy, but the alternative is for the law to decide, arbitrarily, who has freedom of speech and who does not.

Would that really be in the public interest?

1. Old Holborn, Harry’s Place and Mr Eugenides, for the record
2. Isn’t that the bit that just makes you want to scream?
3. I must also doff my cap to the ever-excellent Behind Blue Eyes, whose post on this is similarly spot on.
4. No link.

Seems like BNP MEP Andrew Brons has been using his new-found airtime and media presence to help shine a light on the BNP’s entirely not racist attitudes…

Asked about someone like Dame Kelly [Holmes], who was born in Kent of a white English mother and Jamaican father, and served for several years in the Army before becoming one of this country’s most successful athletes, he said: ‘Kelly Holmes is only partially from this country, even if she is an integrated member of the community.’

Yep, Dame Kelly can win Olympic Gold medals for Britain if she wants, but she’s not really British. Not really. Because, you know, well… She’s black.

It’s not racism. No. It’s common sense.

Duh.

Jo Swinson

Tonight, 6:30, Radio 4. Stephen Fry is hosting in place of the late great Humphrey Lyttleton. I’m sure it’ll be worth watching the Twitter hashtag #isihac as well – although I think I might put Twitter away while the show is on…

There’s a lot of people saying the show just won’t be the same without Humph – it’s true, but if they have any sense, each host will add their own slant without trying to be Humph. I’m looking forward to Jack Dee’s episodes especially.

The Prime Minister’s office refused to comment on rumours that this leaflet has in fact been prepared by the NHS for immediate distribution in the event of an outbreak of the Rage virus.

Image Source, via @rands

Unfortunately, to my mind, his first sentence said one thing which spoke louder than any of the rest of his letter could. It was this:

If there’s one thing that unites this PLP it’s a determination to win the next election.

Doesn’t that just sum up the problem with New Labour? That the only thing that brings them together is the determination to win, and retain, power. That the only thing that’s tearing them apart is the prospect of losing power.

It is also remarkably similar to what that odious twerp Sion Simon said which wound me up no end at the time, too.

It’s almost as if they haven’t noticed that inequality has risen under their watch; that education standards are falling; that social mobility has fallen; that debt, both personal and national, has risen out of control; that crime is rising; that unemployment is rising. One wonders, if the Labour Party weren’t on the path to lose a General Election, whether they would have even noticed these things. Apparently, though, they can’t be brought together by the thought of making the country a better place to live in – they can only be brought together by a thirst for continued power, seemingly for its own sake.

And this is the problem with the Labour rebels. This is why I compared them to the Judean People’s Front. They’re rebels without a cause – they seem to have no idea what they do want – they just know they don’t want to lose the next election.

I’m sorry, Tom, but even in calling for Gordon Brown to resign you’ve exposed the fact that you’re part of a governing party that has not only outstayed its welcome, but lost its way as well. I hope a few years in opposition will help the Labour party find its way again – and if not, that the Liberals can hold Labour to account for what they have done and overtake them four years later. I hope there’s somebody left with the strength to oppose David Cameron’s Conservatives more effectively than the Tories opposed Tony Blair.

I hope for that, but somehow I just don’t expect it.

1. It’s Only Europe

Individual MEPs actually have very very little power over, well, anything. The problem with having a BNP candidate is not the introduction of fascism into Europe (and we’re far from the only country to have a nationalist and socialist party appearing in Brussels); it’s the national embarrassment and the loss of the moral high ground that really stings.

We now have five years coming in which Britain is partially represented by racists and fascists, but at least they won’t be any more effective pushing their politics on us than any of the other MEPs have been. It may be a first step towards Westminster, but it’s a baby step at most, and they won’t make it much further.

2. ‘No Platform’ is Over

The disingenuous idea that we should simply ignore the BNP and refuse to give them a platform is, by necessity, gone. I’ve always disagreed with ‘no platform’, as it simply prevents those who might be convinced by the BNP from ever hearing the counter-arguments against them. They’ll also have…

3. Exactly Enough Rope to Hang Themselves

More publicity for that swivel eyed mad man who leads the BNP is not going to be a good thing for them. The more the BNP appear on the radio and the TV, the more they’ll be exposed as the… erm… unlovely people that they are. I’ve always had a problem with the ‘intellectual hand-wringing’ approach many use toward the BNP. Hopefully we’ll see an end to this and an actual robust challenge made to their politics. This can only be a good thing.

4. The BNP’s Vote Actually Went Down This Year

In comparison with the last European election, it may surprise you to learn that the amount of votes cast for the BNP actually went downwards, after the highest publicity and most costly campaign they’ve ever run.

Voters are not the same thing as party members, and many of them have their own reasons for voting BNP, such as ‘sending a message’. Only a miniscule amount of people agree with the BNPs politics, and it seems that number is actually declining. Which means…

5. This Is Labour’s Failure

Labour have been given such a kicking that it’s hard to believe. In many parts of the nation, Labour has come fifth. In Cornwall, they came sixth – behind the Cornish Nationalists!

The truth is, the BNP’s so-called ‘rise’ is actually the utter failure of Labour. Disenfranchised Labour supporters have been placed in a position where their chosen party is utterly unelectable, but the main opposition – either the Tories or Lib Dems – don’t represent them. They’re left with a choice between staying home or voting BNP.

The reason it being Labour’s failure is important is because Labour aren’t going to win the next election. This form of errant populist socialism tends to take the path of least resistance, and when there’s a Tory government to oppose, Labour will see its support rise while the BNP watch their vote share plummet.

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A quick technology one, before the politics stuff: the Time Magazine cover article this week was absolutely the best thing that’s ever been written about Twitter. Seriously. Well worth reading, even if you don’t get or don’t use Twitter – if you just want to understand what it is that people use Twitter for, and why it’s a big deal.

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Mark Thompson proposed a little wager on the question of whether or not Brown would be able to stay in office beyond the end of June. As you may have noticed, I don’t think he’s got much chance of winning that bet – and even if Brown does go it’ll only be because Labour care more about presentation than they do about politics. But time will tell.

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Blue Eyes documented the death of our democracy yesterday, and is well worth quoting:

However you define “democracy” it is clear that Britain is no longer a democratic country. A leader who was not elected now leads a cabinet of appointees undertaking polices which the people do not support. Specific manifesto promises have been smashed, proposed reforms make the last election seem a very long time ago. That the Prime Minister is left only with disgraced figures such as Mandelson, Darling and Hain and odd-ball outsiders such as Glenys Kinnock shows how few people of talent there are on the red side of the green benches of our elected chamber.

This collapse in our democracy is unprecedented since the turn of last century. It’s a disgrace.

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Alix Mortimer thinks there might be more to Caroline Flint’s accusation the Brown treated her as ‘window-dressing’ than meets the eye. I can’t see how she could be right – surely even Gordon Brown isn’t that low – but her theory fits so well to events that it’s hard not to consider it…

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Charlotte Gore set out the highly democratic process Labour would have to go through to get rid of Brown. Try reading with a thick Russian accent. It’s fun.

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Last but certainly not least is Rachel Sylvester in The Times on Friday:

This is a Shakespearean tragedy, rather than a Greek one, because the hero will be brought down by a fatal character flaw and not by fate. Labour MPs love to debate which tragic hero Mr Brown is most like. Some say he has Hamlet’s tendency to dither – agonising whether “to be or not to be” in favour of public service reform. To others it is Macbeth’s “vaulting ambition which o’er-leaps itself” that will bring him down. For years he was consumed by Othello’s “green-eyed monster”, a destructive jealousy of Mr Blair. This week he more resembles King Lear, driven to distraction by the perceived ingratitude of his daughters who rages on the heath that he is “more sinned against than sinning”.

Just marvellous.

Some starters for ten…

• I went to see Jimmy Carr on Friday, He Was Awesome.
• I’ve just insulted my daughter’s singing on Twitter and am feeling a little guilty about it now.
• My next iPhone application is a game for toddlers about matching shapes up to each other. It’s all made and it works, but the look of the thing is way too spartan at the moment. I’d be interested in suggestions for improvements.
• Sharpe’s Opinion jumped up yet another 91 places in this month’s Wikio rankings, becoming the 222nd most influential blog in the UK. I’ve also been added to the politics category and am straight in at number 118, just a shade from being in the top 100. I expect this to recede next month, though, particularly since I’m not link-blogging at the moment.

• The thunder outside today is highly exciting for little Kayleigh.

…Or whatever else you fancy saying. Mi casa es su casa. Only rule: no politics.

P.S. I’ve seen other bloggers do open threads, but always been terrified that nobody might say anything. I hope this doesn’t happen…

What isn’t clear, however, is exactly who they think would replace him – and more crucially, why.

Alan Johnson has been talked about as a candidate, as has Ed Miliband, and indeed Harriet Harman. When espousing their virtues, though, rarely mentioned are the ideas or policies they might bring in that would be better than what is already being offered by Gordon Brown. Nobody seems to ask how Johnson would have approached the recession; how Miliband would have tackled expenses-gate; how Harman might deal with the collapsing car industry.

This is largely the point that Hopi Sen made when defending Gordon Brown last month. The Labour rebels are utterly without a cause. This isn’t the Rebel Alliance, it’s the Judean People’s Front. They think, in short, that presentation is the problem, not policy. They think Brown is unpopular because he doesn’t communicate well enough, not because the things he communicates are unpopular.

On the whole, Gordon Brown’s policies have actually been fairly popular with the Labour Party. They welcomed the VAT cut, they applauded the new 50p tax band for high earners, they were delighted with the nationalisation of the banks and are cheering on the idea of part nationalisation of the car industry¹. They now want the face at the top to change, but the underlying policies to stay much the same.

It’s remarkably easy to revel in schadenfreude over that point. Remember, after all, that Tony Blair was so undermined by his party because they claimed to be fed up with spin and media presentation overtaking political decisions. They fiercely attack David Cameron, largely for being a normal-seeming human being rather than the dysfunctional-in-public but supposedly intellectually heavyweight² Gordon Brown.

Now, I can’t speak for the electorate at large, and I have never conducted polling to find out whether specific policies would be popular amongst them – but I can make an educated guess that Labour’s return to the Socialism of the 70’s is not really going to successfully win over the hearts and minds of the people.

I can’t imagine, either, that Same Labour Party, Same Labour Policies, New Labour Leader is a campaign slogan that’s going to go down very well at the next General Election.

So New Labour have their hands tied. They can’t really get away with yet another drastic, fundamental change in policy within this term of Parliament, but changing leaders without changing their policy platform stinks of the same style over substance line that they trot out whenever David Cameron appears on the TV.

Raymond Chandler said, “the moment a man begins to talk about technique that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.” I think the would-be rebels would do well to consider that, before they base entire leadership campaigns on technique, and forget entirely about getting the ideas right.

1. Because British Leyland was so successful, you see.
2. Yet to see the evidence…

In the meantime, I just wanted to say how much fun today has been. Caroline Flint’s sudden resignation in the middle of Brown’s Press Conference was one of those moments that will live in my memory for a while. Margaret Beckett leaving the Government is a wonderful wonderful thing (she’s my MP), and

This rather pathetic uprising, from the farcical hotmail inbox to the uncoordinated resignations, has left me in mind of one thing, and one thing only. Here they are: the Judean People’s Front. Enjoy.

You Silly Sods.

And when I say news hit, I mean that Christmas was cancelled. At the end of a day of local and European elections, news reports which would normally chock-a-block filled with election speculation, exit polls and other mind-numbingly dull reports which I wouldn’t watch if you held a gun to my head, instead I was watching Iain Dale, ‘dressed for radio’¹ on News 24 talking about how this time Brown’s really finished, how his position is now untenable.

The Tories are having a field day, too – they’ve been waiting for this day, the one where they can arrive on the TV and twist the knife round as far as it will go.

Hang on a minute, though.

His position is untenable. Where have I heard that phrase before? Oh, yes, it was exactly what was said about Jacqui Smith back two months ago when we found out her husband had been watching porn films on her expense account. It’s exactly what was said about Hazel Blears, and James Purnell, in the wake of the expenses scandal.

All three of these ministers, in other words, have gone from untenable positions right the way through to important resignations in but a few short months. All three of them would have made it back into Brown’s cabinet after a reshuffle. All of them jumped, without any serious expectation of being pushed.

The Labour Party don’t understand what an untenable position means. Gordon Brown wouldn’t know an untenable position if it stole his women and raped his cattle². Gordon Brown’s position may be untenable, but thanks to the minutiae of Labour Party rules, there’s very little chance of a revolt actually being able to remove him unwillingly. Unlike with Thatcher and the Conservatives, Labour can’t simply trigger a leadership election against a sitting Prime Minister without fundamentally changing their own rules. The only way he’s going to leave the post of Prime Minister is if he accepts that somebody else would do a better job. We’re talking about Gordon Brown here. Do you really think that’s gong to happen?

Don’t get me wrong, if Gordon Brown resigns, that there will be worth a bottle of my rather delicious wedding day Champagne. I’ll happily dance a salsa on his political grave³. It would be a day I’d remember for many a happy year, make no mistake. But that Champagne isn’t on ice just yet.

Brown’s position is untenable? I’ll believe that when I see it.

1. Incidentally, a description that, if I were the sort to have illusions of grandeur, I’d take credit for coining…
2. Or something
3. Mental note to self: book salsa classes.

If there’s one overriding theme to this year’s Euro Elections, it’s anyone but the BNP. Apart from not really understanding why they’re so scary in the first place, I’ve also increasingly been worrying about what that says about us, as voters.

You see, we live in a democracy, and in a democracy we accept that the area we live in will be represented by the person who receives the most votes from our neighbours. If we disagree with our neighbours decisions, we have three options: move away from that area to one where we feel our neighbours broadly agree with us; continue living there but accept that our specific view is underrepresented in that area; or, attempt to convince as many of our neighbours as possible that they are making a poor decision and they should actually vote for somebody else.

It’s that third one that seems to cause the most problems. It’s also that third one which gets the libertarian contingent so upset. The fact that the third option exists is what makes democracy great – if you disagree with your neighbours, you are free to try and convince them that they are wrong – but you must also be able to accept the possibility that they might not be convinced, or they might simply not care.

And so we come to the BNP. The thing is, if they represent widely held beliefs in your area, they just may win seats. Even worse, if they do represent the views of people in your area, they actually deserve to win seats. That is how democracy works.

Saying otherwise, in fact, would be undermining the very concept under which this country is governed. Put simply, if the BNP shouldn’t be allowed to win seats, then neither should any other party.

The entire ‘get out the vote to stop the BNP’ argument is utterly vacuous. Not only does it undermine the very concept of democracy, it’s a pure and simple negative campaign. What we should, instead, be doing, is trying to understand what makes people vote for the BNP – what it is that makes people feel that a racist, protectionist, totalitarian party represents them. In some cases it may, obviously, be because they’re racist and xenophobic, but in most cases I imagine it’s because they simply have nowhere else to turn. The solution to the problem of the BNP is not simply to claim that it’s self-evident that ‘the BNP are twats’, but to help provide a real alternative for the disillusioned folk who simply cannot see who else to vote for.

So, before you go out and vote for anyone but the BNP, remember that if you vote against a party, really you’re voting against democracy itself. Vote for the party that comes closest to representing your views, not the one that sends a message¹, not the one that has the most chance of keeping another party out. Vote, always, for the party you agree with the most – if there’s no party, consider independents.

And if everybody does that and it means that the BNP win a seat, be grateful – because it’s far better than the alternative: that we don’t live in a democratic society at all.

1. May I just mention here that I am very upset with David Cameron over this particular point. Receiving an email from him earlier on which said that the reason I should vote Conservative is because I want a General Election irritated me more than anything else he could possibly have said. For once, I find myself on the side of those who say he’s a slimy git, and I don’t like being on that side. Mr Cameron: Must. Try. Harder.

In my defence, though, it wasn’t deliberate – I had intended to vote.

I can actually think of quite a few good reasons to abstain in the European Elections. Obvious ones, like ‘I actually have a life’, ‘my dog ate my ballot paper’ or ‘what election?’ are good enough for the majority of people, and certainly in previous years apathy has been plenty good enough for me. I had been thinking, however, that this year would be different – in 2009 I would end my run of votes for the extremely popular ‘none of the above’ party, and help choose my representative in the European Parliament.

Unfortunately, due to a number of factors including cock-up¹ and, indeed, conspiracy² I haven’t made it to a polling station yet, and now that I’m home, the benefits of voting do not seem like enough to make me cycle half way across town, and back, again.

I was going to pretend I had, you know. Just claim that I voted Libertas, that clearly my vote didn’t amount to anything, and that this whole democracy thing is a waste of time.

I can’t deceive you all, though. So, sorry everybody. If the BNP get a seat in East Midlands, I’m sure it’s my fault entirely.

I don’t know how I’ll ever get over such a catastrophically irrelevant occurrence.

1. didn’t change my address on the electoral roll when I moved house
2. I’m fairly certain it must be conspiracy when the local council doesn’t have an online list of polling stations so I could go to the one near my old house instead.

This time round it really will be the Cabinet of all the Talents.

And as talk moves past the laughing stock of a Prime Minister who forced himself upon us and had his wicked way, one name rises above all others. One man is ready to shoulder the burden of Government, to take the Labour Party to its next election – to Boldy Go Fourth.

A man whose name strikes fear into the heart of the Conservative Party. A man who has the strength and the tenacity to be a true leader. A man who can single-handedly lift this Government, and indeed this country, out of its malaise.

Some say, that when the division bell tolls, it tolls just for him; that before saying a word in the House of Commons, Mr Speaker asks his permission; that even the Fees Office wouldn’t dare advise him on his expense claims; and that he’s never been… To Bogna.

All we know is, he’s called Alan Johnson¹.

Image from Wikipedia.

But hang on a minute.

That’s all well and good, and perhaps he is the best man for the job, but haven’t we been here before?

A Labour leader who’s clearly stayed past his welcome, a Labour party absolutely desperate to show unity and commonality of purpose, rather than losing their way amid bickering and in-fighting, a de facto successor whose time has come, waiting in the wings keeping his hands clean?

Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it. Sounds, in fact, much like the situation which brought Gordon Brown to power. What’s more, I wouldn’t put it past the Labour Party to do exactly the same thing over again – particularly because no one wants to be left standing when the music stops and a General Election is called – one that the Labour Party can quite easily lose. If Gordon Brown goes, the next leader has under a year to prove themselves and is likely to be forced out after a lost election. Tactically speaking, it would make sense for a would-be leader such as David Milliband or Harriet Harman to hang back, let someone else take the fall, and then step up to the plate to become leader of the opposition.

The one thing this country doesn’t need right now is to have yet another leader appointed, not elected. We mustn’t let Alan Johnson become the heir apparent to the Labour Party throne. Even if he’s the right man for the job, there should be a competition. The more we talk about him as if he’s clearly the only candidate, the less likely it is that he’ll face a contest – and without a contest, he doesn’t have to win an argument about which direction he’d take the country in.

It’s bad enough that we’ve had two full years of a Prime Minister that it looks like we’ll never get to show our true disapproval of at the polls. Don’t let Labour get away with this a second time. Somebody – anybody – needs to make this into a competition.

There needs to be an election.

1. Just try and hear Handel’s Messiah Chorus in your head while you’re looking at that image, won’t you. Try.

Three years after her child was put into care, Miss Pullen is now taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights, because she has been unable to win her case in the Family court or the Appeals court to prevent her daughter being adopted by her foster parents – which would mean that Miss Pullen will lose visitation rights and be, in the words of The Times, ‘barred from seeing’ her own daughter. For more background reading, have a look here and here

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Now, first of all, from what I’ve seen so far, there is nothing which suggests that Miss Pullen has any intention of harm toward her daughter. According to the Times, the Appeal Court said that “[her] love for her daughter is not doubted”. A psychiatrist said of her that “She has no previous history of learning disability or mental illness and did not receive special or remedial education. Miss Pullen fully understands the nature of the current court proceedings, can retain them, weigh the information and can communicate both verbally and in writing.” On that basis, if there are further grounds on which her daughter was taken away from her, I for one would like to hear them.

The thing that bugs me the most is that Miss Pullen was never allowed to attempt to prove these allegations wrong. The social services deemed her to be a threat, and that was it – her baby was gone. Because Baby K was taken straight from the hospital and placed in care, we’ll never know how capable her Mother would have been at looking after her. Had she been allowed to try, and then subsequently put her child’s life in danger, there would be grounds to take action. Before that happens, though, nobody has any definite grounds on which to say that Miss Pullen has done wrong.

And that’s the crucial point here, really – without having been given that time with her daughter to prove herself able or otherwise to look after her, she’s only at most guilty of aloofness, or of not spending enough time visiting the hospital, or of nurses and social workers not liking the cut of her jib. These are not crimes sufficient to remove a child from someone who could quite easily have been a wonderful Mother. In fact, these are crimes disturbingly reminiscent of the events surrounding Christine Collins, whose ordeal with the LAPD inspired the recent film Changeling¹.

You see, not only is their brash assertion that Miss Pullen ‘lacks the intelligence’ to look after her daughter not grounds to take her child off her, it isn’t conceptually any different to any number of other attributes which could potentially be barriers to parenting.

If we accept that taking a child away from a Mother because of issues of intelligence is okay, then we’re implying that we get to decide, in advance, who’s going to be a good parent and who’s going to be a bad parent, and, furthermore, that if we decide, for any reason, that we think they’ll be a bad parent, we can just take the kid away from them without recourse.

Is your Mother disabled? That’s fine, come along with me, we’ll find you a new, able-bodied Mother. She’s gay? Don’t worry, there’s plenty of straight ones to choose from. Atheist? No trouble, we’ll find a nice Christian family for you to live with.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not the society I want to live in. Not by a very very long way.

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Clearly, our Social Services system exists for a good reason, and that reason is to look after the welfare of children. They do vitally important work to prevent children from coming to harm, and we only actually hear about them when something goes wrong – we rarely hear about the good work that they do every day. If this case is as reported so far, though, I simply cannot for the life of me figure out how that purpose is being served.

Charlotte raised the very good point that now that we’re in this situation, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to remove the child from the foster parents – who have, after all, spent three years caring for a very sick child and have built up a relationship with her. There is a good case to be made that now we’re here, the child’s interests would be best served remaining with a loving family than being passed from pillar to post.

The Times article is fairly unclear about whether her natural Mother is actually trying to get her daughter back, though, or just prevent the adoption process so that she can retain visiting rights. Personally, I don’t see how the welfare of the child would be served by denying access to her biological Mother.

However, even accepting that it may be better for the child to stay with the foster parents, I still can’t help but focus on the fact that, unless there’s far more to this story than meets the eye, there is a Mother out there who has been cruelly deprived of the chance to bring up her own child. Would it really be good enough for the council at this point simply to turn around, admit they were wrong, apologise and say ‘Oh well, chin up, nothing we can do about it now, really, is there’?

Because if that was my daughter, and she had been taken away from me like that, I don’t think I’d take no for an answer.

In fact, I know I wouldn’t take no for an answer.

1. In fact, everyone commenting on this story should make sure they get round to watching three fantastic movies on the theme of parenthood and forced adoption: Changeling, Gone Baby Gone, and Coraline

Nottingham City Council are today taking their fight to the European Court of Human Rights after the City of Nottingham was removed from the care of the Council and placed up for adoption.

The Council, who for legal reasons can only be identified as ‘those disgraceful bastards’, have been told by the courts and the people of Nottingham that the city will just have to look after its own damn potholes for the foreseeable future, and the councillors will be disallowed visiting rights.

Under the new rules, Nottingham Councillors will only be allowed to visit some parts of the city, such as the train station, Victoria bus station, or the city jail. It’s understood that they are only permitted to visit the stations if they are intending to leave the city; the jail if they intend to stay.

The proceedings are going ahead despite the council’s claims to be making Nottingham ‘a city we’re all proud of [sic]’. The court decided that any council which believed it was right to remove a child from her Mother on the grounds of ‘lack of intelligence’ clearly could not be trusted to continue pretending to run a city.

One Nottingham resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said ‘I’m not sure what the Council are thinking – everybody knows that their Mama was so stupid she got run over by a parked car’.

Some councillors, however, were adamant that the court ruling was ‘unfair’, pointing out that many other city councils in the region made stupid decisions on a regular basis. In a rare moment of clarity, one council member suggested that we might as well be abolishing all local councils.

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UPDATE: I’ve written a rather more serious take on this issue now. Do read if you’re interested.

Bearing in mind all the usual caveats about polls, and remembering that this is only one poll, it’s still wonderful news for the anti-Brownites among us.

So, can we over-think this poll and extrapolate wild fantasies about the future on the basis of one, possibly shaky, survey result? Yes we can!

I still believe, you see (as do many others), that we should have a General Election at the earliest possible moment, and curiously enough this latest poll may hasten the day that we head for the polling stations. The reason for this being that this poll will made Gordon Brown’s position even weaker, and talk of replacing him is already hitting fever pitch. Let us, then, for a moment assume that someone within the Labour Party is about to grow courage enough to stick in the knife. And what a beautiful thought that is.

Brown’s replacement, if they have more sense than Brown did, should do all he or she can to keep Labour from dropping to third place at the next election. Winning isn’t really much of a possibility now, so the priority ought to be protecting the party from the humiliation of ending up in the cheap seats. The only near-guaranteed way to do this would be to hold an election while the electorate are still willing to give them a chance. A year could easily be too long.

So, assuming electoral meltdown next week, a replacement Prime Minister at the Labour Conference in September and an election in October/November, we might finally see the end of twelve years of Labour within the year 2009.

Either that, or we might just see Vince Cable become the Shadow Chancellor.

Today’s outlook, I have to say, seems bright and blue, with nary a cloud in sight.

So, apologies if you’ve been looking forward to your daily dose of random links appearing here – but to make up for this sad loss I’m going to try and write longer posts more often in the future, and I’ll still be posting stuff up on Twitter. Right now, though, I’m off to have a cool can in the garden.

Enjoy the sunshine, folks.

The British National Party stand to gain at least one seat in the European Parliament at the coming Euro elections. That seems pretty much unavoidable at this point. They’re being helped along, obviously, by the fact that just at the moment any of the mainstream parties calling them crooks and liars is much like the pot describing the kettle as decidedly stainless-steel-looking. From the way some (particularly those of a ‘Sunny’ disposition) are talking about this, though, you’d think the world is about to be destroyed by Red Matter.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see why.

Back in the strange place we like to call reality, not only do the BNP (slightly disturbingly) represent the views and beliefs of a statistically relevant number of, well, British Nationals, but gaining a seat at the Euro elections is about as relevant and useful as coming fifth place in whatever the Fourth Division is called nowadays. There really isn’t that much call to be scared.

Euro elections are near enough meaningless at the best of times – even the Lib Dems have managed to hold seats without inflicting any serious damage. There’s a reason that turnout at Euro elections is pitiful, even in comparison to the embarrassingly low General Election turnout, and that’s the fact that we, the voters, recognise the futility of choosing a candidate, and the pointlessness of the whole charade.

What’s more, if the Liberals and Lefties who are most concerned about the rise of the BNP ever do get the Proportional Representation electoral system that they so long for, the BNP will become a fact of life. If only half a percent of the people in this country feel the way the BNP do (and I’d hazard a guess that this would be an underestimate) they’d have several seats in Parliament under Proportional Representation. It may be an unpleasant fact of life, perhaps, but much like death, or Windows, it’d be a fact of life which we just have to deal with.

I’m not suggesting that the BNP are anything other than a vicious and vile party, of course. They are clearly not deserving of the space they occupy, and there’s certainly nothing British about them. The BNP are no scarier than the Monster Raving Loony Party, though¹. They have less influence than UKIP, for God’s sake. Who gives a damn about such a miniscule and unimportant force in politics? We really need to stop talking about the BNP as if they’re some kind of genuine threat.

The people who are actually doing damage to Britain, right now, are Gordon Brown and his cronies. They’re the ones in power, they’re the ones busily driving the country so quickly towards the cliff edge that in another year we may have lost our credit rating, be borrowing from the IMF and have to spend decades repaying the debt they have accrued, with little or nothing to show for it.

I think we’d do well, as a nation, to go ahead and ignore the side show of the BNP and worry more about what damage Labour are going to do next. At least that way, we’re shining the spotlight where it deserves to be shone.

1. Of course, the MRLP at least have a more coherent policy platform…

Lord Norton, on why independent MPs don’t always fare that well in Parliament:

The dilemma is the same now as it was when Vernon Bartlett was elected as an Independent MP in 1938.  He recalled in his memoirs: ‘I had warned the electors of Bridgwater that I should vote only on matters that I understood: I was not going to be bossed about by party whips.  That had sounded all right in the constituency, at a time when there was a strong reaction against exaggerated party discipline…  But I found that I understood so little, and I had no party whip to explain procedure to me.’

I have to admit, I’d actually prefer a situation where MPs only voted on legislation they understood (or, indeed, ‘crowd-sourced’ their decision making process for issues they don’t fully understand) rather than blindly doing what the whip tells them. If MPs understood more of what they passed, Parliament might make better decisions.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Panic are the most awesome independent Mac software developers around¹. They’ve got 50% off their 4 flagship apps, Coda, Transmit, CandyBar and Unison, for the next three days. Great opportunity to snap up Coda at half price (~£30, it’s normally $99), which I use for all my web design work (at home or at work) and it’s simply the best web development application in the world.

UPDATE: They’ve also made a pretty awesome video to promote the sale.

1. It’s well worth reading The Audion Story, incidentally, if you’re interested in some folklore about the early days of MP3 software, and specifically how iTunes came into being.

The Shropshire Star has an obituary today, marking the sad passing of British Satire.

British satire died today with the announcement that former pop star David Van Day is considering standing as an MP. British Satire was 49. British Satire was born in the 1960 stage show Beyond the Fringe and came to prominence over the next four decades. However, British Satire’s health began to fail in recent years as it found itself in a world increasingly beyond parody.

R.I.P., Satire.

James Graham

Norfolk Blogger on the rubbish Lib Dem leaflets in Broadland. This is exactly the same kind of thing as what I was saying a few weeks ago. Replace ‘leaflets’ with ‘websites’, and that’s the problem with ignoring the internet in political campaigning.

I read loads of blog posts, I listened to arguments, I gave a whole lot more thought to the subject than it arguably deserves. I started some drafts and cast them aside. Had I been writing on paper, my waste paper basket would have been over-flowing, much like Shakespeare’s in the scene at the beginning of Shakespeare in Love¹.

The problem is, the subject is so skull-numbingly, brain-crushingly boring that it’s tough to come up with words that make it interesting.

So, I’ll just try and wrap up what I want to say in three paragraphs, and we’ll all get on and do something better with our lives. Also, if this kind of thing bores you to tears, you can skip to the end where I’ve put a lovely YouTube video for your viewing pleasure.

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I think all this talk of proportional representation is a red herring. Somewhere, this wonderful logical leap has been taken, from the existence of a correlation between safe seats and expenses fraud to assertions that it is absolutely imperative that we reform our electoral system. Frankly, that’s rubbish. For two reasons I can think of straight off, and many others that I reserve the right to think of at a later date. Firstly, it isn’t the system which gives MPs safe seats, it’s the voters. If all the people in a constituency want to vote for Tories, Tories in that constituency will have safe seats – whatever the voting system. What’s more, it isn’t safe seats which turn MPs into frauds and cheats, it’s the lack of integrity. There are MPs who can cope with the responsibility of being in a safe seat without spending taxpayers money on cleaning their moat. Electoral reform will do absolutely nothing to solve the problem of corrupt politicians (just as it has done nothing to rid other countries of corruption).

What’s actually happening here is that some people who have always wanted electoral reform, especially the Lib Dems, are disingenuously using a politically expedient moment to push an unrelated agenda into the limelight, and in doing so they are letting the frauds off the hook. MPs who’ve been caught with their hands in the till tried to blame their lack of decency on the Fees Office, but that wouldn’t wash. Now they’re being allowed to say that it wasn’t them, it was the First Past The Post system what done it².

There’s a simple way to keep our elected representatives on the straight and narrow path, and that’s to watch them like hawks. Thanks to the marvel of the internet, we now can. When all MPs expenses receipts are published online, they won’t be able to get away with making fraudulent claims. Changing the electoral system won’t make a blind bit of difference to the honesty of the people we elect. Openness and transparency will.

Hang on, I’m sure I remember reading something about that recently…

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Anyway, that’s quite enough of that. Instead:

Honourable Mentions For The Awesome People Who I Actually Agree With About This

Tom Harris. And, if you will, Tom Harris. What’s more, Tom Harris. Good on you, Tom, It’s appreciated.

Charlotte Gore, who I find myself (annoyingly) agreeing with yet again, despite her assurances that she’s ‘Not a Tory’. Yeah, right.

Boris Johnson, of course. Nuff said. Somebody buy that man a pint.

The Daily Mash. Oh God yes, the Daily Mash.

Feel free to add your name to that list in the comments, if you either couldn’t care less about electoral reform, or think it’s a bloody stupid idea which has little or no bearing on the expenses issue.

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Lastly, because I think the blogosphere needs it, here’s the last time such shady logic was used to justify radical action:

1. Except, obviously, I’m far more handsome than that Joseph Fiennes fella
2. And what in God’s name is wrong with First Past The Post anyway? You get the most votes, you win. Simple as. Who wants their second choice candidate writing the law? Second Place is still a fucking loser. Deal with it.

James Graham writes about the poor reporting of The Telegraph.

But the problem with the data being in the hands of a single newspaper is that everything we get is transmitted via its own idiosyncratic political position. And the problem with this being an example of chequebook journalism, as opposed to the investigative journalism of people like Heather Brooke, is that the paper has to make good on its investment – and that means extending the coverage and the ramping up the salaciousness of it as much as possible.

Well worth reading the whole thing. I made many of the same points earlier in the week. The Telegraph have not acquitted themselves well over this story, and certainly not proving the case that professional journalism is inherently better for the public than what the blogs can provide.

I disagree with James about David Cameron, though, who I think has been far more pro-active than he suggests – in particular, publishing all the Shadow Cabinet’s expense claims online. Compared with Brown’s dithering or the Nick Clegg/Chris Rennard kerfuffle, Cameron’s looking very much like the clear leader.

Stephen Tall at Lib Dem Voice is unhappy about how the ‘resignation’ of Liberal Democrat chief executive Chris Rennard has been handled by the party:

It has been clear to everyone since the News of the World alleged that Chris had claimed £41k in Lords’ allowances after designating his Eastbourne flat as his main residence (rather than his London house) that Chris and the party would need to make a statement – a statement from Chris which clarified his living arrangements, and a statement from the party which explained how it would deal with the claims that Chris had abused the system.

Yesterday Chris and the party decided to issue statements which dealt with neither of those issues. That was a mistake. It was a mistake by Chris. It was a mistake by Nick Clegg, as leader. And it was a mistake by Ros Scott, as Party President and chair of the Federal Executive.

Lord Rennard has come out of this looking for all the world like somebody who is both guilty as sin and lying to protect himself; Nick Clegg, when compared with David Cameron, looks unwilling to bite the bullet. Not a PR disaster on the scale of, well, Nadine Dorries, but still not great.