Monday 30 June 2008
For here on earth we have no abiding city....
Have now found a new place to live...this time it was necessitated by our landlords selling the house over our heads...so different from last year when we had to move because the Iron Buddha had thrown all the glassware at my head, and next day had invited the landlord's son in to view the damage. Anyway there is a new domicile in sight. The only prob now is shifting far too much furniture, bought at rock-bottom prices from my former palatial residence at the British Consulate-General in Hamburg and conveyed more than once at sky-high prices to my subsequent domains...help!
Sunday 29 June 2008
Olympics! Let's go! China!
Wonderful piece on the BBC website about some Chinese ministry having dreamed up an approved way of cheering on the Chinese athletes in the Beijing Olympics.
Officials are now being sent around the country to teach the approved cheer to schoolchildren. Apparently it is a combination of waving one’s arms about, clapping, and chanting “Olympics! Let’s go! China!” in a pre-approved rhythm.
A spokesman said that the official cheer was “in accordance with international principles on cheering”. Bet you didn’t know there were any of those.
The Iron Buddha couldn’t quite see the funny side. She insisted that we must have all this sort of thing too. Football chants, for example. Surely the Kop or the Stretford End couldn’t all sing the same song at the same time unless someone had sat them down and taught them?
I had to explain, making the point that I wasn’t saying that the Olympics would make her country look like a complete bunch of bastards (we all know that anyway, but can put it out of our minds if we so wish) but that it would make the most populous country on earth look like one enormous collective horse’s arse. And that we won’t forget.
Officials are now being sent around the country to teach the approved cheer to schoolchildren. Apparently it is a combination of waving one’s arms about, clapping, and chanting “Olympics! Let’s go! China!” in a pre-approved rhythm.
A spokesman said that the official cheer was “in accordance with international principles on cheering”. Bet you didn’t know there were any of those.
The Iron Buddha couldn’t quite see the funny side. She insisted that we must have all this sort of thing too. Football chants, for example. Surely the Kop or the Stretford End couldn’t all sing the same song at the same time unless someone had sat them down and taught them?
I had to explain, making the point that I wasn’t saying that the Olympics would make her country look like a complete bunch of bastards (we all know that anyway, but can put it out of our minds if we so wish) but that it would make the most populous country on earth look like one enormous collective horse’s arse. And that we won’t forget.
And a warm welcome back to Tory Sleaze...
MEPs on the take! (Pope Catholic!) MPs fiddling expenses and enabling their sons to hold “Fuck Off I’m Rich” parties on the taxpayer’s tab! Lord Ashcroft of Belize buying up marginal seats! Half the Shadow Cabinet deriving unearned income from propping up Mugabe! Couldn’t be better, one might have thought. OK, the present lot may be nothing to write home about, but just because the others haven’t had their bums on the seats for 11 years, we’ve no need to forget that they’re all wannabe fat-cats with a boundless sense of entitlement.
Only trouble is, it’s pretty hard to bring that argument to bear. Ever since the horrible Mandelson said that “New Labour are fairly relaxed about people getting filthy rich” prior to being a bit less relaxed about the filthy rich pricing him and his boyfriend out of chi-chi houses in Notting Hill, it’s been pretty clear that New Labour are every bit as bad. What I’d rather hoped is that, on his accession to power, the dour son of the Presbyterian manse had gathered the Parliamentary Labour Party around him and said:
“Right, lads and lasses, this is where the party stops. An MP earns around £60k a year. Bear in mind that that’s at least double what most of those you represent are earning, but don’t forget either that it doesn’t go very far here in the Smoke. Yes, there’s a glamorous world out there that you may feel you want to be part of. Sorry, but it’s not going to happen. That’s the deal. From now on you eat in greasy spoons, or the odd Indian or Chinese. Generally speaking, you don’t set foot in the Congestion Charge Zone unless you’re on parliamentary business. Anyone seen in a place of entertainment where the drinks cost more than £5 a time will receive a good kicking from the Whips. Tell your significant others they can forget about the existence of Harrods and Harvey Nicks. And if you don’t like that, don’t like the idea that the people’s elected representatives should be debarred from the fun bits of their own capital city, then perhaps you might give a thought to how the rest of the electorate feels about it.”
And then we'd be able to pick the greedy, sleazy Tories off, one by one, to great electoral advantage, as no-one likes corrupt, complacent fat-cats. Chance wasted, all for a few directorships and the odd night at Annabel's.
Only trouble is, it’s pretty hard to bring that argument to bear. Ever since the horrible Mandelson said that “New Labour are fairly relaxed about people getting filthy rich” prior to being a bit less relaxed about the filthy rich pricing him and his boyfriend out of chi-chi houses in Notting Hill, it’s been pretty clear that New Labour are every bit as bad. What I’d rather hoped is that, on his accession to power, the dour son of the Presbyterian manse had gathered the Parliamentary Labour Party around him and said:
“Right, lads and lasses, this is where the party stops. An MP earns around £60k a year. Bear in mind that that’s at least double what most of those you represent are earning, but don’t forget either that it doesn’t go very far here in the Smoke. Yes, there’s a glamorous world out there that you may feel you want to be part of. Sorry, but it’s not going to happen. That’s the deal. From now on you eat in greasy spoons, or the odd Indian or Chinese. Generally speaking, you don’t set foot in the Congestion Charge Zone unless you’re on parliamentary business. Anyone seen in a place of entertainment where the drinks cost more than £5 a time will receive a good kicking from the Whips. Tell your significant others they can forget about the existence of Harrods and Harvey Nicks. And if you don’t like that, don’t like the idea that the people’s elected representatives should be debarred from the fun bits of their own capital city, then perhaps you might give a thought to how the rest of the electorate feels about it.”
And then we'd be able to pick the greedy, sleazy Tories off, one by one, to great electoral advantage, as no-one likes corrupt, complacent fat-cats. Chance wasted, all for a few directorships and the odd night at Annabel's.
Saturday 28 June 2008
Anything happened this last week?
Well, not a lot, in the wider scheme of things.
Mugabe seems to have won his hotly-contested election. Clever. Lots of dictators have held on to power by holding bogus elections with 99% turnouts and 100% majorities. Uncle Bob was smart; just like Chairman Mao (his mentor in so many ways) with the "let a hundred flowers bloom" campaign in 1957, where he encouraged people to come clean about opposing him so he could kick their heads in very shortly afterwards, Uncle Bob put on an election so that he could see who the opposition were and squash them; and then had the brilliant idea of staging a run-off so he could do it again. And it worked. When will we get it into our heads that, faced with nasty governments, we have only two choices: a) let them carry on and hope that is all turns into something different in the end or b) terminate them with extreme prejudice? I thought we'd gone through all these arguments in 1938-39.
And then there was a thing called Euro 2008. No, it wasn't boring because England weren't in it - England would have been out for some time in any case. It was boring because it was boring. The only saviours have been the Turks and Spaniards. I was just dreading a Germany v. Italy final. As things are - VIVA ESPAÑA, with brass knobs on.
And Wendy Alexander's got sacked from the leadership of the Scottish NotLabour party. My heart bleeds. NotLab has been asking for this ever since the greasy shiteater Mandelson said "We are extremely relaxed about people getting filthy rich". Rimming paedophile Jersey tax exiles for illegal donations! You couldn't make it up.
Wimbledung. Some American has been clattered by the harpies for making sexist comments about women players. Sorry, ladies, but most people aren't much interested in tennis per se, and are rather keen on totty, male or female. That, I'm sorry to say, is why we watch it. Yes, we welcome the new influx of Eastern European women, but almost entirely because they are fit as fuck and look as if they go like TGVs. Don't be silly.
Mugabe seems to have won his hotly-contested election. Clever. Lots of dictators have held on to power by holding bogus elections with 99% turnouts and 100% majorities. Uncle Bob was smart; just like Chairman Mao (his mentor in so many ways) with the "let a hundred flowers bloom" campaign in 1957, where he encouraged people to come clean about opposing him so he could kick their heads in very shortly afterwards, Uncle Bob put on an election so that he could see who the opposition were and squash them; and then had the brilliant idea of staging a run-off so he could do it again. And it worked. When will we get it into our heads that, faced with nasty governments, we have only two choices: a) let them carry on and hope that is all turns into something different in the end or b) terminate them with extreme prejudice? I thought we'd gone through all these arguments in 1938-39.
And then there was a thing called Euro 2008. No, it wasn't boring because England weren't in it - England would have been out for some time in any case. It was boring because it was boring. The only saviours have been the Turks and Spaniards. I was just dreading a Germany v. Italy final. As things are - VIVA ESPAÑA, with brass knobs on.
And Wendy Alexander's got sacked from the leadership of the Scottish NotLabour party. My heart bleeds. NotLab has been asking for this ever since the greasy shiteater Mandelson said "We are extremely relaxed about people getting filthy rich". Rimming paedophile Jersey tax exiles for illegal donations! You couldn't make it up.
Wimbledung. Some American has been clattered by the harpies for making sexist comments about women players. Sorry, ladies, but most people aren't much interested in tennis per se, and are rather keen on totty, male or female. That, I'm sorry to say, is why we watch it. Yes, we welcome the new influx of Eastern European women, but almost entirely because they are fit as fuck and look as if they go like TGVs. Don't be silly.
Sunday 22 June 2008
Good old Rod Liddle
One of the few habits of mine which I would whole-heartedly recommend to others is devoting the first sentient few minutes of one's Sunday morning to reading Rod Liddle's columns in the Sunday Times. There are two of them; one general and one on sport, and a guaranteed laugh-out-loud on a Sunday morning is not to be sneezed at.
Today, after some good stuff on the vile Peter Mandelson, he gives a big-up to Naomi Campbell for swearing and spitting at wankers at Heathrow Airport after they lost her baggage, and started to tell her what her "options" were, as if the whole thing were her responsibility. Rod adds: "I always say you can judge how ghastly a place is by the number of signs telling you not to lamp the staff. At Heathrow there’s one every few yards. Campbell, to her credit, ignored them."
Yes, I've recently been travelling by rail a fair bit, and I've noticed too that there are signs everywhere telling you not to kick shit out of railway employees, as if in recognition of the fact that that would be the normal impulse of any rail traveller. But I wouldn't go as far as Rod or Naomi. I'm looking into the cost of producing sheets of stickers, to be sold to commuters and plastered onto these signs, saying "ATTACK THE BOSSES INSTEAD!" Just a thought. In the same way as all these bank advertisements asking "Are you worried about poverty in old age?" and suchlike. They just cry out for stickers proclaiming "HA-HA! WE AREN'T!"
Today, after some good stuff on the vile Peter Mandelson, he gives a big-up to Naomi Campbell for swearing and spitting at wankers at Heathrow Airport after they lost her baggage, and started to tell her what her "options" were, as if the whole thing were her responsibility. Rod adds: "I always say you can judge how ghastly a place is by the number of signs telling you not to lamp the staff. At Heathrow there’s one every few yards. Campbell, to her credit, ignored them."
Yes, I've recently been travelling by rail a fair bit, and I've noticed too that there are signs everywhere telling you not to kick shit out of railway employees, as if in recognition of the fact that that would be the normal impulse of any rail traveller. But I wouldn't go as far as Rod or Naomi. I'm looking into the cost of producing sheets of stickers, to be sold to commuters and plastered onto these signs, saying "ATTACK THE BOSSES INSTEAD!" Just a thought. In the same way as all these bank advertisements asking "Are you worried about poverty in old age?" and suchlike. They just cry out for stickers proclaiming "HA-HA! WE AREN'T!"
Saturday 21 June 2008
Why are we all corporate slaves?
Because you more or less have to be, otherwise you face so many problems you’re going to feel bludgeoned into going back into the corporate slammer.
We all sorta kind need to live somewhere. Now, my sister is a professional musician. As tends to happen, she married a fellow-musician she’d met on the circuit. For a while they lived on the outskirts of London, because that’s where a lot of the work is, freelancing (which amounts to living by one’s own efforts, not like a battery chicken). As rents rocketed, they tried to buy a flat. Of course that wouldn’t have been cheap either, but the point was they couldn’t get a mortgage. Supported yourself freelance for three years? Doesn’t count. Haven’t got a “steady” job with a proper employer? Sorry, no mortgage. In the end my brother-in-law felt forced to jack in the double-bass and go and train as a computer bod, and has been a proper wage slave ever since. Abracadabra, here’s the money. He’s changed jobs three or four times since then, and could of course have been sacked at any moment, but he’d showed willing, and thus is allowed a roof over his head by the banking dictatorship.
I have been up against the same sort of thing. (To recapitulate: I live on regular drawdowns from a redundo payment I landed eighteen months ago, and have thus neither salary, pension or benefits. That’s freedom, and nice non-work if you can get it.) I don’t even think about getting a mortgage, as it’s a foregone conclusion that no-one will lend me a bent penny. So I have to rent. This process is slowed by the need to take a joint decision with someone who couldn’t take a decision if you stuck lighted matches between her toes, but we got there, at least I thought we had until I discovered that she’d pulled out of it while I was in London last week. So we found another place, and I went along to do the paperwork.
“Who is your employer?”
“Don’t have one. I’m retired.”
“Do you have a letter detailing your pension entitlements?”
“No. My income is paid regularly from a bank in Germany.” (In order to fool my bank into thinking I have a regular income, I pay a regular monthly amount in.) “Here are three months of bank statements, as requested, showing the regular monthly payments.”
“Can you produce a letter saying where this money is coming from?”
“No. I transfer it myself. But if you like I can show a bank statement proving I have enough money to pay the rent for ten years.”
“That’s no good. You might spend all that money on something else.”
“Well, yes. But if I had a regular income I could spend all that on beer as well, couldn’t I? And if I had a regular job I could get sacked tomorrow.”
Blah, blah, blah.
“So do you mean that if you don’t have a regular income from some corporate entity you cannot rent a house? My present rental contract runs out in three weeks. Should I go to the council and proclaim myself homeless?”
More jobsworth blah. So I simply went across the road to the other agent whose house the Iron Buddha had decided against on flimsy grounds, checked that they weren’t going to be so bloody silly, and signed up with them again.
In the meantime, I remember deciding in 1981, to the horror of various acquaintances, that a regular job is a pointless waste of life and is for arseholes only, and I wasn’t wrong, not in the slightest. Three cheers for job insecurity, and in the meantime tax the buggers to fuck.
We all sorta kind need to live somewhere. Now, my sister is a professional musician. As tends to happen, she married a fellow-musician she’d met on the circuit. For a while they lived on the outskirts of London, because that’s where a lot of the work is, freelancing (which amounts to living by one’s own efforts, not like a battery chicken). As rents rocketed, they tried to buy a flat. Of course that wouldn’t have been cheap either, but the point was they couldn’t get a mortgage. Supported yourself freelance for three years? Doesn’t count. Haven’t got a “steady” job with a proper employer? Sorry, no mortgage. In the end my brother-in-law felt forced to jack in the double-bass and go and train as a computer bod, and has been a proper wage slave ever since. Abracadabra, here’s the money. He’s changed jobs three or four times since then, and could of course have been sacked at any moment, but he’d showed willing, and thus is allowed a roof over his head by the banking dictatorship.
I have been up against the same sort of thing. (To recapitulate: I live on regular drawdowns from a redundo payment I landed eighteen months ago, and have thus neither salary, pension or benefits. That’s freedom, and nice non-work if you can get it.) I don’t even think about getting a mortgage, as it’s a foregone conclusion that no-one will lend me a bent penny. So I have to rent. This process is slowed by the need to take a joint decision with someone who couldn’t take a decision if you stuck lighted matches between her toes, but we got there, at least I thought we had until I discovered that she’d pulled out of it while I was in London last week. So we found another place, and I went along to do the paperwork.
“Who is your employer?”
“Don’t have one. I’m retired.”
“Do you have a letter detailing your pension entitlements?”
“No. My income is paid regularly from a bank in Germany.” (In order to fool my bank into thinking I have a regular income, I pay a regular monthly amount in.) “Here are three months of bank statements, as requested, showing the regular monthly payments.”
“Can you produce a letter saying where this money is coming from?”
“No. I transfer it myself. But if you like I can show a bank statement proving I have enough money to pay the rent for ten years.”
“That’s no good. You might spend all that money on something else.”
“Well, yes. But if I had a regular income I could spend all that on beer as well, couldn’t I? And if I had a regular job I could get sacked tomorrow.”
Blah, blah, blah.
“So do you mean that if you don’t have a regular income from some corporate entity you cannot rent a house? My present rental contract runs out in three weeks. Should I go to the council and proclaim myself homeless?”
More jobsworth blah. So I simply went across the road to the other agent whose house the Iron Buddha had decided against on flimsy grounds, checked that they weren’t going to be so bloody silly, and signed up with them again.
In the meantime, I remember deciding in 1981, to the horror of various acquaintances, that a regular job is a pointless waste of life and is for arseholes only, and I wasn’t wrong, not in the slightest. Three cheers for job insecurity, and in the meantime tax the buggers to fuck.
We can find out where you live, Abu Qatada
So Abu Qatada is out of jail, purely because we won’t send him back to Jordan where he comes from. Because he’d be tortured there? No, because he’d be put on trial there and the possibility can’t be ruled out that some of the evidence in that trial might have been obtained through torture. Aah. We disapprove. But to the extent of letting him go free to live in an £800,000 house in Acton? Well, that’s a free society for you.
But his neighbours have already been quoted as saying they don’t want him there. And where’s the money come from anyway? We know, don’t we, just as we know he’s guilty as hell in Jordan wherever the evidence comes from. But if it’s really a free society, why aren’t we told his exact address? Aah. It’s not as free as that. But maybe we can find it out, and plaster it all over the web. Sorry, Abu; you’re not going to live in peace in this country, old son. It won’t take too much effort.
The general principle of setting up a left-wing private investigation service to put the addresses of proven but legally immune bastards into the public domain is worth a bit of thought.
But his neighbours have already been quoted as saying they don’t want him there. And where’s the money come from anyway? We know, don’t we, just as we know he’s guilty as hell in Jordan wherever the evidence comes from. But if it’s really a free society, why aren’t we told his exact address? Aah. It’s not as free as that. But maybe we can find it out, and plaster it all over the web. Sorry, Abu; you’re not going to live in peace in this country, old son. It won’t take too much effort.
The general principle of setting up a left-wing private investigation service to put the addresses of proven but legally immune bastards into the public domain is worth a bit of thought.
Back to the LTV?
I am determined to revive this acronym, which all sorts of people don’t seem to have heard of, though it was current around the time of Thatcher’s first election. You don’t know what it means? Think Aneurin Bevan, think “lower than....” Goddit? Right.
Despite the horrors of New Labour and the smarmy grin of Cameron, LTV is no less appropriate an acronym than it was then. No, I don’t believe that open espousal of the cause of scabby rich bastards is better than pretending to care about other people while in fact being in love with s.r.b. Under a Tory government we’ll be dicked over quite shamelessly with a smug “That’s what the people wanted, old chap” rather than after a genuine fight. And a) remember what sort of government we got last time the Labour movement couldn’t be arsed to defend its own government, and b) what a sodding long time (and what a lot of fatal compromises) it takes to get them out once they’re entrenched. No, even if it takes a whole basketful of Polly Toynbee’s clothes-pegs, we can’t let the bastards back in.
Despite the horrors of New Labour and the smarmy grin of Cameron, LTV is no less appropriate an acronym than it was then. No, I don’t believe that open espousal of the cause of scabby rich bastards is better than pretending to care about other people while in fact being in love with s.r.b. Under a Tory government we’ll be dicked over quite shamelessly with a smug “That’s what the people wanted, old chap” rather than after a genuine fight. And a) remember what sort of government we got last time the Labour movement couldn’t be arsed to defend its own government, and b) what a sodding long time (and what a lot of fatal compromises) it takes to get them out once they’re entrenched. No, even if it takes a whole basketful of Polly Toynbee’s clothes-pegs, we can’t let the bastards back in.
Tuesday 17 June 2008
Conclusion
Whoops! I forgot the conclusion to the last posting. Here it is:
Why don't we just simplify matters? It's impossible to earn more than £100,000 a year (perhaps we might just about extend this to £150,000) on the open market; you need a cartel or a scam to earn more than that. Let's bring the class war down to a straight fight between those under £150,000 a year and those over. If we win we'll tax them to extinction and win our capital city back. And there are a lot more of us.
Why don't we just simplify matters? It's impossible to earn more than £100,000 a year (perhaps we might just about extend this to £150,000) on the open market; you need a cartel or a scam to earn more than that. Let's bring the class war down to a straight fight between those under £150,000 a year and those over. If we win we'll tax them to extinction and win our capital city back. And there are a lot more of us.
Class - what does it mean?
Class isn't easy to define these days. "Middle class" has always been a term of insult, whether from the proper working class or the Evelyn Waugh/Alan Clark tendency. And yet, in most generally understood contexts, the great majority of us are middle class. Is the definition: own your own house, albeit mortgaged to the hilt? (If so, Thatcher played that brilliantly with the council house sell-off.) Work in some sort of management function? (More or less, perhaps, but lots of people get promoted into something like that without their economic position being seriously altered at all.) Don't smoke or put sugar in your tea? Take a bit of an arsey approach to colleagues or neighbours? (Again, difficult to define.) Give a shit about your children's education? (Balls - many indisputably working-class people do that.) Ever switch the telly off? (No Chinese person of any class ever does that.)
My friend The Exile has a good definition of working class: regarding work (or, as he rightly describes it, "bastard work") as something one does purely for the money. A real worker does not involve him/herself in the central problems of the organisation: employer's profits, employer's problems. The real worker will not do an extra stroke without being paid: if close of play is 5 o'clock, you are in the pub at 5.01 washing the taste of work out of your gob with a foaming pint. That is looking more appropriate than ever these days; so many people are expected to put in loads of extra unpaid hours out of fear that someone might think them "lacking in commitment", and are quite prepared to betray their friends, partners and children in order to appease their bosses. That, I suppose, is a good enough definition of "middle class" these days. But I took the "working-class" approach even when I was a senior manager in the public sector. No-one got any unpaid overtime out of me. And now I am living off my invested redundo payment and don't do a bloody stroke of work, I still maintain I'm one of Keir Hardie's paladins.
But I won't forget meeting an IWCA (Independent Working Class Association) man at a gig in London, and offering him a place to crash as he didn't have one. We went to my place in a black cab, and he was a bit taken aback to find it was a five-bedroom detached, where I was able to offer him a couple of glasses of decent malt, and even more so to accidentally wake up my Slovak au-pair while looking for the loo. But don't worry, Mark; I lost the whole bang shoot in a divorce.
My friend The Exile has a good definition of working class: regarding work (or, as he rightly describes it, "bastard work") as something one does purely for the money. A real worker does not involve him/herself in the central problems of the organisation: employer's profits, employer's problems. The real worker will not do an extra stroke without being paid: if close of play is 5 o'clock, you are in the pub at 5.01 washing the taste of work out of your gob with a foaming pint. That is looking more appropriate than ever these days; so many people are expected to put in loads of extra unpaid hours out of fear that someone might think them "lacking in commitment", and are quite prepared to betray their friends, partners and children in order to appease their bosses. That, I suppose, is a good enough definition of "middle class" these days. But I took the "working-class" approach even when I was a senior manager in the public sector. No-one got any unpaid overtime out of me. And now I am living off my invested redundo payment and don't do a bloody stroke of work, I still maintain I'm one of Keir Hardie's paladins.
But I won't forget meeting an IWCA (Independent Working Class Association) man at a gig in London, and offering him a place to crash as he didn't have one. We went to my place in a black cab, and he was a bit taken aback to find it was a five-bedroom detached, where I was able to offer him a couple of glasses of decent malt, and even more so to accidentally wake up my Slovak au-pair while looking for the loo. But don't worry, Mark; I lost the whole bang shoot in a divorce.
David Davis: national hero or total tosser?
(Incidentally, wouldn’t people called Davis normally choose another name than David for their son? Sounds like a bit of a piss-take, like Major Major in Catch-22. Actually, I’ve just remembered he was adopted, so the name David had possibly stuck to him before anyone realised that he would be adopted by people called Davis. Sorry.)
But what a tosser! If he wanted to throw down the gauntlet to the Government, surely he didn’t believe that holding an unnecessary by-election in a strongly Tory constituency would prove anything? That Labour would admit defeat on the 42-day issue if they lost the vote in a seat they couldn’t even win in 1997? And didn’t he see that all Labour would have to do was refuse to field a candidate to leave him standing there like a spare prick in a brothel?
Of course he realised that there would be a personal succès d’éstime for him, with loads of Lib Dem types and others who wouldn’t vote Tory in a thousand years praising him to the skies. Even some of the far Left blogs, the ones who hate NuLabor more than Hitler, necrotising fasciitis and the British packaging industry combined, have been having orgasms over his craggy visage.
Let’s look at this supposed hero of liberty. A principle he felt so strongly about that he was prepared to put his whole career on the line for it? Nah. He’d obviously been working bloody hard day and night on the issue, as was right and proper for a Shadow Home Secretary, and it’s given him tunnel vision, causing him to think that it’s the only game in town, despite the fact that a) whether an exception to normal procedures be granted for 28 or 42 days is hardly an issue of principle and b) the Government will have all hell getting it through the Lords anyway. Also, as David Aaronovitch has pointed out in today’s Times, Davis’ principled record on libertarian issues doesn’t really bear examination. Staunch defender of Clause 28, opponent of equality in age of consent; what have Moslem extremists got that gay people haven’t?
Anyway, I wish him a resounding victory over the windmills of Haltemprice and Howden, full of sound and fury, signifying – nothing.
But what a tosser! If he wanted to throw down the gauntlet to the Government, surely he didn’t believe that holding an unnecessary by-election in a strongly Tory constituency would prove anything? That Labour would admit defeat on the 42-day issue if they lost the vote in a seat they couldn’t even win in 1997? And didn’t he see that all Labour would have to do was refuse to field a candidate to leave him standing there like a spare prick in a brothel?
Of course he realised that there would be a personal succès d’éstime for him, with loads of Lib Dem types and others who wouldn’t vote Tory in a thousand years praising him to the skies. Even some of the far Left blogs, the ones who hate NuLabor more than Hitler, necrotising fasciitis and the British packaging industry combined, have been having orgasms over his craggy visage.
Let’s look at this supposed hero of liberty. A principle he felt so strongly about that he was prepared to put his whole career on the line for it? Nah. He’d obviously been working bloody hard day and night on the issue, as was right and proper for a Shadow Home Secretary, and it’s given him tunnel vision, causing him to think that it’s the only game in town, despite the fact that a) whether an exception to normal procedures be granted for 28 or 42 days is hardly an issue of principle and b) the Government will have all hell getting it through the Lords anyway. Also, as David Aaronovitch has pointed out in today’s Times, Davis’ principled record on libertarian issues doesn’t really bear examination. Staunch defender of Clause 28, opponent of equality in age of consent; what have Moslem extremists got that gay people haven’t?
Anyway, I wish him a resounding victory over the windmills of Haltemprice and Howden, full of sound and fury, signifying – nothing.
Wen Again
Break from blogging for a few days; in the Smoke, where getting internet access was far from straightforward. But the carnival of wooftery mentioned in the last post duly occurred, and was a lot of fun. In particular, two of my best friends now have Thai boyfriends over here (let in by some sudden inexplicable weakness in the Home Office’s iron front) and we were able to have many alcoholic seminars on the theme of oriental partners – how much we love them and how fucking difficult they are to manage – to an accompaniment of slammed doors, loud arguments, locked rooms and cancelled parties; all recounted with great glee to Enormous Oaf 2, who is still on his first boyfriend and in need of a warning of what may lie ahead, having already had an extended introduction to the horrors of marriage breakdown, courtesy of his parents. Still he seems actually to have involved listening to hours of clapped out drunks thirty or forty years older than himself arguing the toss about religion, science, ethics, history and the Rt. Hon. David Davis.
Tuesday 10 June 2008
Capital Punishment
...which is how Dylan Thomas described his occasional necessary trips to London. I hate the Wen as a place to live in, as my ex-wife does in my house on my tab, but it's nice to visit occasionally. I'm principally going down to see Enormous Oaf 1 do some thesping, in the major production at Royal Holloway, as he is believed (principally, though by no means exclusively, by himself) to be shit-hot. Apart from him (he has an utterly adorable petite blonde girlfriend, as bright as a laser beam and entirely capable of keeping him in some sort of order) I don't suppose I'll meet another heterosexual all the time I'm there. London for me is a carnival of wooftery - after all straight blokes my age tend to have families and thus have to work too hard to be available for wack. Even Enormous Oaf 2 is a woofter, and we shall all enjoy several evenings where the tout ensemble is as camp as the Gulag Archipelago. As appeared on a banner in Derek Jarman's film Edward II:
Liberté, Egalité, Homosexualité
Amen to that, at least temporarily.
Liberté, Egalité, Homosexualité
Amen to that, at least temporarily.
Monday 9 June 2008
Practical Islam
Today's Independent (yes, I know, but I'll leave my criticism of the Indefensible for the time being) has a piece on a 14-year-old wannabe suicide bomber explaining how he got that way. "All I know is what the mullahs told me and kept telling me, that the British and the Americans were against God," he said with his head bowed down, his hands twisting a handkerchief.
How does this differ from what young men in Birmingham and Lancashire are being told?
"I wanted to see my mother and father but I was told that was not possible for security reasons. That upset me but I thought I will be seeing them again as soon as I got back.(Oh yes? So the poor kid clearly hadn't grasped what he was in for.) They said my family would get well paid for what I was doing."
Tolerance, always tolerance. And understanding of the reality of Islam. Well, thanks - you can't get much nearer to understanding of the reality of Islam than that. Sorry, but this is what it is about.
No Islam In Britain!
How does this differ from what young men in Birmingham and Lancashire are being told?
"I wanted to see my mother and father but I was told that was not possible for security reasons. That upset me but I thought I will be seeing them again as soon as I got back.(Oh yes? So the poor kid clearly hadn't grasped what he was in for.) They said my family would get well paid for what I was doing."
Tolerance, always tolerance. And understanding of the reality of Islam. Well, thanks - you can't get much nearer to understanding of the reality of Islam than that. Sorry, but this is what it is about.
No Islam In Britain!
Technobollocks
Have been remiss in my contributions to the blogosphere today. The fact is I have had my password rejected all over Blogger. Particular apologies are due to my friend The Exile; not only was I rendered unable to piss on his arguments (in the nicest possible way!) on his own blog, but couldn't even reply to his comment on my own! Anyway, to put it succinctly: anti-imperialism is a steaming heap of crap.
42 days.....
Sounds like a film title, doesn't it? But we all know what it means and what it's a symbol of.
I ought to be amazed, though of course I'm not, that this has become such a cause celebre for the wet liberals. Yes, let's listen to all the expert advice etc., but let's not introduce any wet-lipped "moral" wabbling and vacillation into the issue. There's only a practical case here, not a moral one. Neither Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus or the Bill of Rights were ever intended to protect the rights of people who want to impose a foreign religion on Britain by terrorist violence. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth they wouldn't have held anyone for 42 days without solid evidence. Sir Francis Walsingham would have cooked some up, and they'd all have been hung by the neck unil half-dead, had their intestines drawn out and their bollocks chopped off, and subsequently had quarters of their bodies nailed up at city gates around the kingdom. Not that Cipriano would go that far - just that the bastards should feel lucky to stay alive, as the ones at Guantanamo Bay should. (Believe me, the Americans won't take any prisoners next time.)
And the idea, floated by Sam Leith in the Telegraph (!) last week, that the 42-day lock-up threatens all of us. No, Sam, it won't happen to you and it won't happen to me. And the wet policemen who claim it will "alienate the Moslem community". Well, it won't affect any normal peaceable Moslems either. Anyone who gets het up about it shows themselves to be at least ambivalent about the jihadis. Let's get this straight: I COULDN'T GIVE A MONKEY'S WHAT HAPPENS TO JIHADI MOSLEMS, AND ANYONE WHO COULD IS A BIT SUSPECT! Now, what part of that did you not understand?
I ought to be amazed, though of course I'm not, that this has become such a cause celebre for the wet liberals. Yes, let's listen to all the expert advice etc., but let's not introduce any wet-lipped "moral" wabbling and vacillation into the issue. There's only a practical case here, not a moral one. Neither Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus or the Bill of Rights were ever intended to protect the rights of people who want to impose a foreign religion on Britain by terrorist violence. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth they wouldn't have held anyone for 42 days without solid evidence. Sir Francis Walsingham would have cooked some up, and they'd all have been hung by the neck unil half-dead, had their intestines drawn out and their bollocks chopped off, and subsequently had quarters of their bodies nailed up at city gates around the kingdom. Not that Cipriano would go that far - just that the bastards should feel lucky to stay alive, as the ones at Guantanamo Bay should. (Believe me, the Americans won't take any prisoners next time.)
And the idea, floated by Sam Leith in the Telegraph (!) last week, that the 42-day lock-up threatens all of us. No, Sam, it won't happen to you and it won't happen to me. And the wet policemen who claim it will "alienate the Moslem community". Well, it won't affect any normal peaceable Moslems either. Anyone who gets het up about it shows themselves to be at least ambivalent about the jihadis. Let's get this straight: I COULDN'T GIVE A MONKEY'S WHAT HAPPENS TO JIHADI MOSLEMS, AND ANYONE WHO COULD IS A BIT SUSPECT! Now, what part of that did you not understand?
Sunday 8 June 2008
Ouch!
I don’t usually take much notice of the BBC when they warn me that what they are about to show me may be a bit distressing. Am I a man or a mouse? And how much of the news isn’t rather distressing, if one thinks about it? But I’ve just found myself almost wishing I’d heeded the warning.
On the BBC website there is a first-person account of a former torturer employed by the Zimbabwe secret police. “A first aid box was opened - and inside were pliers and screwdrivers. We asked the man to choose between the two. The captain then took the pliers and called us near. He got near his genitals, then got one of his balls, pressed it with the pliers, and popped it. There was a lot of blood.”
This has had me crossing my legs ever since. Good for the bloke, though – he got out of it, and has fled the country. But how did he come to get into it? “If you're me, and you don't know about the secret service, all you know is that it protects the sovereignty of your country - it's not a difficult job to do.” The sovereignty of your country. Of course. And now we know what that means: the right to have your balls “popped” by someone of the same skin colour as yourself.
Let’s Make Sovereignty History, folks. What did Mugabe call his recent political cleansing effort against the poor living in shanty towns? Operation Murambatsvina – “clear out the rubbish”. Yes – let’s clear out all the trash and vermin in the souped-up Mercs. Let Assassination Thrive.
On the BBC website there is a first-person account of a former torturer employed by the Zimbabwe secret police. “A first aid box was opened - and inside were pliers and screwdrivers. We asked the man to choose between the two. The captain then took the pliers and called us near. He got near his genitals, then got one of his balls, pressed it with the pliers, and popped it. There was a lot of blood.”
This has had me crossing my legs ever since. Good for the bloke, though – he got out of it, and has fled the country. But how did he come to get into it? “If you're me, and you don't know about the secret service, all you know is that it protects the sovereignty of your country - it's not a difficult job to do.” The sovereignty of your country. Of course. And now we know what that means: the right to have your balls “popped” by someone of the same skin colour as yourself.
Let’s Make Sovereignty History, folks. What did Mugabe call his recent political cleansing effort against the poor living in shanty towns? Operation Murambatsvina – “clear out the rubbish”. Yes – let’s clear out all the trash and vermin in the souped-up Mercs. Let Assassination Thrive.
Cruckut, Lovely Cruckut
The delights of the cricket season. A couple of times I’ve had a yen to pop over and see a live Test Match, something I haven’t done for years due to living abroad. But I always end up thinking of the horribly early starts (I thought of going to Nottingham for the fourth day today; it would have been a two-and-a-half hour drive in each direction, and as things fell out there was only an hour’s play.) And you can’t see what’s happening on the close lbw shouts, it costs thirty-five quid, and you can’t even bring any booze in, only buy it at a tenner a glug.
So it’s the armchair and the remote control and the direct debit to Rupert Murdoch. Also the ancient English custom of having the radio on (in the kitchen) while the TV’s on in the living room. The reason for this is that one is always supposed to be doing domestic things while watching the cricket, to appease one’s conscience and one’s wife, assuming for the purposes of argument that the two can be distinguished. For some reason the radio commentary runs about one second ahead of the TV, which means that, if you leave the door open, you can hear of a stirring occurrence in the kitchen and be in the living room in time to see it happen. Alternatively, you can see a bowler running up to bowl while hearing that the outside edge has already been snapped up by second slip.
This being an England-New Zealand series, one is always delighted by the Kiwi commentators. New Zealanders only seem to use one vowel sound, the sort of flat “u” found in “uh-huh” and represented in Korean by a horizontal line; linguists call it a “schwa”. So people are described as taking wuckuts, getting caught in the slups and occasionally huttung the ball for sucks.
So it’s the armchair and the remote control and the direct debit to Rupert Murdoch. Also the ancient English custom of having the radio on (in the kitchen) while the TV’s on in the living room. The reason for this is that one is always supposed to be doing domestic things while watching the cricket, to appease one’s conscience and one’s wife, assuming for the purposes of argument that the two can be distinguished. For some reason the radio commentary runs about one second ahead of the TV, which means that, if you leave the door open, you can hear of a stirring occurrence in the kitchen and be in the living room in time to see it happen. Alternatively, you can see a bowler running up to bowl while hearing that the outside edge has already been snapped up by second slip.
This being an England-New Zealand series, one is always delighted by the Kiwi commentators. New Zealanders only seem to use one vowel sound, the sort of flat “u” found in “uh-huh” and represented in Korean by a horizontal line; linguists call it a “schwa”. So people are described as taking wuckuts, getting caught in the slups and occasionally huttung the ball for sucks.
Saturday 7 June 2008
Nation of Slaves
Rather distasteful news from China, that they’re now taking a leaf out of the Soviet book and bunging dissidents in the nuthouse. As usual the logic is impeccable, as I heard from a spokesman on the telly (thanks to the Iron Buddha I now have Chinese official television as a sort of 24-hour streaming media, a high price to pay for my occasional access to Sky Sports); “these people who are always protesting are obvious political maniacs – their political views are completely out of line with reality”. Well, yes. Complete domination of the Party is the reality – if you can’t accept that you must be stark staring bonkers.
And of course they all accept that – at least 99.9% of them do. Chinese apologists claim that the dissidents are only a minute fraction of the population, and this is perfectly true. The vast majority have the mentality of slaves, trembling at the frown of their employers when not kow-towing to the government. Chinese industrial relations are pre-Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Which is fair enough, I suppose, if that’s what they want. But we don’t want them bringing that attitude over here. My good lady has been chambermaiding in a hotel recently, to fill in while she gets her business set up. As the newest member of the team she of course got landed with all the shitwork, mainly cleaning the bogs with a strong chemical which gave her a persistent headache. (What price elf ‘n’ safety?) The supervisor being on holiday, she had no recourse and the senior woman on the team refused to budge. Finally having reached the stage where she had to get things changed or give up the job, she appealed to the general manager. After this she fielded a 45-minute panic phone call from a Chinese colleague in the hotel; the latter was utterly terrified that the IB’s complaint would somehow reflect on her, put her in bad with management or other colleagues, just because she was a fellow-Chinese and had recommended the IB for the job in the first place. So she is now either having to withdraw her complaint to pacify her friend, or just give up the job. And the IB still hasn’t been paid for two days work she did in Blackburn three months ago, and is showing no inclination to demand it. I shall have to go down there myself with my boots blacked.
I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion, after 20 years of fairly enjoyable involvement with them, that the Chinese won’t do. They just don’t understand the first thing about living in a free country, and so probably shouldn’t be here, at least not if they’re going to undermine 200 years of workers’ struggle.
And of course they all accept that – at least 99.9% of them do. Chinese apologists claim that the dissidents are only a minute fraction of the population, and this is perfectly true. The vast majority have the mentality of slaves, trembling at the frown of their employers when not kow-towing to the government. Chinese industrial relations are pre-Tolpuddle Martyrs.
Which is fair enough, I suppose, if that’s what they want. But we don’t want them bringing that attitude over here. My good lady has been chambermaiding in a hotel recently, to fill in while she gets her business set up. As the newest member of the team she of course got landed with all the shitwork, mainly cleaning the bogs with a strong chemical which gave her a persistent headache. (What price elf ‘n’ safety?) The supervisor being on holiday, she had no recourse and the senior woman on the team refused to budge. Finally having reached the stage where she had to get things changed or give up the job, she appealed to the general manager. After this she fielded a 45-minute panic phone call from a Chinese colleague in the hotel; the latter was utterly terrified that the IB’s complaint would somehow reflect on her, put her in bad with management or other colleagues, just because she was a fellow-Chinese and had recommended the IB for the job in the first place. So she is now either having to withdraw her complaint to pacify her friend, or just give up the job. And the IB still hasn’t been paid for two days work she did in Blackburn three months ago, and is showing no inclination to demand it. I shall have to go down there myself with my boots blacked.
I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion, after 20 years of fairly enjoyable involvement with them, that the Chinese won’t do. They just don’t understand the first thing about living in a free country, and so probably shouldn’t be here, at least not if they’re going to undermine 200 years of workers’ struggle.
Whittering about Mugabe
Loads of predictable outrage about Mugabe going to Rome to pontificate at a UN Food Summit while his people are starving. Why the f**k do people bother. We know Mugabe will carry on until he drops off the perch, naturally or otherwise. While we concede his right to starve and kick hell out of people, and that of the Burmese generals to let people die in the Irrawaddy Delta, and the “international community” does indeed concede these rights, we may as well save our breath to cool our coffee. The point about Mugabe coming to Europe is that his security arrangements cannot be anywhere near as tight as they are in Harare. There must be millions of potential sniper nests in Rome. And with all these outrage-inspiring five course meals – dozens of waiters etc. must have had a chance to slip something in his lobster thermidor. It’s the old Roman way, after all. Where’s the Empress Livia Augusta when we need her? The disgrace is not that Mugabe went to Rome, but that he got back safely. At least Peter Tatchell had a go at him in Brussels a few years ago, and got a kicking for his pains. It wouldn’t have involved much more planning to take the man out for good.
We on the Left ought to be moving round to the idea of assassination to push the world in the right direction. The mainstream media wouldn’t print anything of this sort, so go the blogosphere! Marx queered the pitch rather by rejecting individual assassinations, but he thought that economic forces would do the job for us, and – sorry Karl – they haven’t and they won’t. And the argument that if our side start splatting baddies the baddies will start splatting “us” shouldn’t worry us lefties much. Assassination is one of the only ways I can think of of making a real impact on the ruling class, and of more or less confining that impact to the ruling class.
We on the Left ought to be moving round to the idea of assassination to push the world in the right direction. The mainstream media wouldn’t print anything of this sort, so go the blogosphere! Marx queered the pitch rather by rejecting individual assassinations, but he thought that economic forces would do the job for us, and – sorry Karl – they haven’t and they won’t. And the argument that if our side start splatting baddies the baddies will start splatting “us” shouldn’t worry us lefties much. Assassination is one of the only ways I can think of of making a real impact on the ruling class, and of more or less confining that impact to the ruling class.
A new scam
One has become accustomed to generous-spirited West Africans offering one amounts of money in the tens of millions in return for a little help laundering it, and one knows what to do with their e-mails. Yesterday I received a more subtle version of the same thing. This came allegedly from an impeccable source, with whom almost no computer user has not had legitimate dealings – viz. Microsoft Himself. They tell me that, in a recent promotion involving internet users, my numbers (I was not, of course, aware that I had any) had come up, and that I was due a payment of £150,000 which I only had to claim.
To do this I have to write to a man with a Hong Kong e-mail address but a UK phone number, under the reassuring moniker of Barry Coleman-Williams, giving him my name, address, phone number, nationality and gender, but nothing further (at least at the moment). The subtlety of this scam lies not just in the seeming straight dealing of Barry and his friends; it lies also in the sum held out. We all know, at least in the economic regions I inhabit, that sums like ten or twenty million simply don’t exist; but a hundred and fifty K is the sort of sum one could just do with. So well done chaps, nice try, but I don’t think so.
(P.S. I googled friend Barry, and discovered that a chap called Ameer Saeed Al-Ghani received the same e-mail, and that Ameer seems to have drawn the same lottery numbers as I have.)
To do this I have to write to a man with a Hong Kong e-mail address but a UK phone number, under the reassuring moniker of Barry Coleman-Williams, giving him my name, address, phone number, nationality and gender, but nothing further (at least at the moment). The subtlety of this scam lies not just in the seeming straight dealing of Barry and his friends; it lies also in the sum held out. We all know, at least in the economic regions I inhabit, that sums like ten or twenty million simply don’t exist; but a hundred and fifty K is the sort of sum one could just do with. So well done chaps, nice try, but I don’t think so.
(P.S. I googled friend Barry, and discovered that a chap called Ameer Saeed Al-Ghani received the same e-mail, and that Ameer seems to have drawn the same lottery numbers as I have.)
Monday 2 June 2008
Bloody Moslems again
Well, actually not Moslems, but the West Midlands Police, insofar as the two groups can be meaningfully distinguished. Firstly the Channel 4 documentary, where they had to admit there wasn’t any real reason to hassle the programme for distorting what imams had been recorded as saying in the Green Lane Mosque and elsewhere. Yes, they did praise Osama bin Laden, yes, they did call for the murder of gay men, yes, they did describe the 98% of the population who are not Moslems as “filthy” and “unclean”. But in a sense it's fairly easy to follow the thought processes of the police. If these truths were to be admitted, it’s fairly clear that the police would be under pressure to close these mosques and arrest a few people. And they thought – possibly rightly – that this would lead to serious, and possibly violent, confrontation. So best, perhaps, to turn their fire on the programme-makers who had uncovered these inconvenient truths.
And then, more recently, a couple of American evangelists being told that they shouldn’t go evangelising in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham as it was a Moslem area and evangelising there counted as a “hate crime”. By a Police Community Support Officer, no less. And if the Americans came back, they were warned that they might be beaten up, with the strong implication that they should not expect any assistance from the police in that case.
Well, obviously this Keystone Kop had no authority to say anything of the sort, still less to submit the Americans to a harangue on US policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he did. But he had clearly worked out which way the wind was blowing in our second city.
Firstly, where Moslems predominate in an area, they want complete control, and we would be well advised to grant this. As a result, anyone trying to exercise natural British freedoms is being unreasonable and provocative, as Moslems prefer to be unchallenged in their own areas.
Well, I suppose we can still choose whether we are prepared to accept this situation or not. I’m happy to go down to Alum Rock any time. Not that there isn't enough of this sort of work to be done right here in Lancaster.
And then, more recently, a couple of American evangelists being told that they shouldn’t go evangelising in the Alum Rock area of Birmingham as it was a Moslem area and evangelising there counted as a “hate crime”. By a Police Community Support Officer, no less. And if the Americans came back, they were warned that they might be beaten up, with the strong implication that they should not expect any assistance from the police in that case.
Well, obviously this Keystone Kop had no authority to say anything of the sort, still less to submit the Americans to a harangue on US policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he did. But he had clearly worked out which way the wind was blowing in our second city.
Firstly, where Moslems predominate in an area, they want complete control, and we would be well advised to grant this. As a result, anyone trying to exercise natural British freedoms is being unreasonable and provocative, as Moslems prefer to be unchallenged in their own areas.
Well, I suppose we can still choose whether we are prepared to accept this situation or not. I’m happy to go down to Alum Rock any time. Not that there isn't enough of this sort of work to be done right here in Lancaster.
Sunday 1 June 2008
Once more unto the breachchchyechhhhyuurrgggggghhhhh....
Resuming after an extended break, sadly not spent having a wonderful time but in the depths of personal horror; bipolar depressive disorder can leave you up the shit end for months at a time. Still, nil desperandum....
Was in the relative paradise of East Asia some of the time. China and Thailand.
China
It’s building up nicely for the drug- and nationalism-fest in August. Moronic security-goons everywhere telling you you can’t go here and you can’t go there. I went for a walk in a residential area where I had conducted a romance of sorts some fifteen years ago, and was told by some uniformed turd that I couldn’t go down that street. Why not? I asked in perfectly good Chinese. The guy looked at me as if I were a Martian and summoned a female assistant standing a few yards away who put up her hand and told me “No Road!”. I said it was jolly interesting that no-one would tell me why there was no entrance to this area, and that my Embassy would be most intrigued to hear about it.
The kerfuffle over the Olympic Torch Relay showed me one thing that I shouldn’t have forgotten about – how supremely important it is to the Chinese to put on a show. I can remember thinking when the Chinese first got the slot that it was utter madness putting on the Olympics in August in Beijing – for the simple reason that it rains all the time in August in Beijing, and I lived there long enough to know. However, the Chinese think they can fix the weather. By a process known as “seeding the clouds” they can send aircraft up to cause the clouds to tip out all their rain so it doesn’t fall on the desired occasion. They did this in 1999 on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic and it worked (though who knows whether it might not have been fine anyway?). But, I thought, doing it for one day is one thing; do they really think they can do it for three weeks?
No, I discovered. They don't give a shit for what the weather will be like during the actual Olympics; what they really care about is the opening ceremony (8th August). As it happens my ex-girlfriend, whom I met out there, is the senior choreographer for this performance. For anyone outside the Chinese cultural circle (and probably for a lot of people within it, who just daren’t say so) these shows go on for about five hours and are quite staggeringly boring. For the Chinese, they are the centre of the whole thing. A good five months before the Olympics start, my ex and her fellow-choreographers have been confined in a hotel outside Beijing working 18-hour days and 7-day weeks till August. She got a day off at a traditional festival in April to see her 7-year old son but was called back in the late afternoon. I was bloody lucky to get three hours to have dinner with her. There are 10,000 people involved in this opening ceremony and about 8,000 in the closing job. You can see why they get worked up about who goes to attend the thing. But we can expect beautiful summer weather for the ceremonies and filthy pissing rain for the actual athletics.
Thailand
Thailand, of course, is full of whores. Whatever people tell you about why they go there, the real reason s that it is full of whores. I had some vague plans, and so did the (English) mate I went out there to meet, to do a bit more travelling round the country. It didn’t come off, as it never does, because it’s too bloody hot to move, but also because I realised that the main reason I wanted to see more of the disease-infested and God-forsaken interior of Thailand was so that I could tell people back home that I hadn’t just hung around Bangkok and Pattaya, so that they didn’t think “Ah, just another sex tourist”.
Especially as I wasn’t being a sex tourist. I am pushing fifty, and it takes more than it used to to light my fire these days. In fact I found the whole business a bit depressing this time. I still like hanging around in the sleazy parts of town, because you meet more fun people there, but I wasn’t buying. Over the years I have come to understand the background to the unpleasantly exploitative aspects of Thailand’s main industry (goes for most of the rest of South East Asia too).
It’s clear that there’s no point in blaming the girls for being promiscuous and money-grubbing. Nor, despite the universal witness of Western political correctness, it is right to blame the punters. Some of us don’t like to have to promise all our time and all our money for the rest of our lives in order to get our legs over; and nor do I believe men who want to pay for sex should do it in their own countries, as each country perverts the business by means of illogical laws, and most prostitution in Western countries is far too deeply mixed up with the drugs trade, which a lot of us would rather avoid. No, the problem in Thailand is the local men, far too many of whom want to swan around on motorbikes and swig Sang Som whiskey without doing a stroke of work. Half the young women in Thailand have been raped and abused by fathers and brothers who then effectively pimp them out. Then they find worthless boyfriends who want money without doing anything for it, and are stuck financing these shitheads for the best years of their lives. That’s why Thailand (and the Philippines, and as far as I know Cambodia and Vietnam) are heaving with whores. It’s not out fault.
Was in the relative paradise of East Asia some of the time. China and Thailand.
China
It’s building up nicely for the drug- and nationalism-fest in August. Moronic security-goons everywhere telling you you can’t go here and you can’t go there. I went for a walk in a residential area where I had conducted a romance of sorts some fifteen years ago, and was told by some uniformed turd that I couldn’t go down that street. Why not? I asked in perfectly good Chinese. The guy looked at me as if I were a Martian and summoned a female assistant standing a few yards away who put up her hand and told me “No Road!”. I said it was jolly interesting that no-one would tell me why there was no entrance to this area, and that my Embassy would be most intrigued to hear about it.
The kerfuffle over the Olympic Torch Relay showed me one thing that I shouldn’t have forgotten about – how supremely important it is to the Chinese to put on a show. I can remember thinking when the Chinese first got the slot that it was utter madness putting on the Olympics in August in Beijing – for the simple reason that it rains all the time in August in Beijing, and I lived there long enough to know. However, the Chinese think they can fix the weather. By a process known as “seeding the clouds” they can send aircraft up to cause the clouds to tip out all their rain so it doesn’t fall on the desired occasion. They did this in 1999 on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic and it worked (though who knows whether it might not have been fine anyway?). But, I thought, doing it for one day is one thing; do they really think they can do it for three weeks?
No, I discovered. They don't give a shit for what the weather will be like during the actual Olympics; what they really care about is the opening ceremony (8th August). As it happens my ex-girlfriend, whom I met out there, is the senior choreographer for this performance. For anyone outside the Chinese cultural circle (and probably for a lot of people within it, who just daren’t say so) these shows go on for about five hours and are quite staggeringly boring. For the Chinese, they are the centre of the whole thing. A good five months before the Olympics start, my ex and her fellow-choreographers have been confined in a hotel outside Beijing working 18-hour days and 7-day weeks till August. She got a day off at a traditional festival in April to see her 7-year old son but was called back in the late afternoon. I was bloody lucky to get three hours to have dinner with her. There are 10,000 people involved in this opening ceremony and about 8,000 in the closing job. You can see why they get worked up about who goes to attend the thing. But we can expect beautiful summer weather for the ceremonies and filthy pissing rain for the actual athletics.
Thailand
Thailand, of course, is full of whores. Whatever people tell you about why they go there, the real reason s that it is full of whores. I had some vague plans, and so did the (English) mate I went out there to meet, to do a bit more travelling round the country. It didn’t come off, as it never does, because it’s too bloody hot to move, but also because I realised that the main reason I wanted to see more of the disease-infested and God-forsaken interior of Thailand was so that I could tell people back home that I hadn’t just hung around Bangkok and Pattaya, so that they didn’t think “Ah, just another sex tourist”.
Especially as I wasn’t being a sex tourist. I am pushing fifty, and it takes more than it used to to light my fire these days. In fact I found the whole business a bit depressing this time. I still like hanging around in the sleazy parts of town, because you meet more fun people there, but I wasn’t buying. Over the years I have come to understand the background to the unpleasantly exploitative aspects of Thailand’s main industry (goes for most of the rest of South East Asia too).
It’s clear that there’s no point in blaming the girls for being promiscuous and money-grubbing. Nor, despite the universal witness of Western political correctness, it is right to blame the punters. Some of us don’t like to have to promise all our time and all our money for the rest of our lives in order to get our legs over; and nor do I believe men who want to pay for sex should do it in their own countries, as each country perverts the business by means of illogical laws, and most prostitution in Western countries is far too deeply mixed up with the drugs trade, which a lot of us would rather avoid. No, the problem in Thailand is the local men, far too many of whom want to swan around on motorbikes and swig Sang Som whiskey without doing a stroke of work. Half the young women in Thailand have been raped and abused by fathers and brothers who then effectively pimp them out. Then they find worthless boyfriends who want money without doing anything for it, and are stuck financing these shitheads for the best years of their lives. That’s why Thailand (and the Philippines, and as far as I know Cambodia and Vietnam) are heaving with whores. It’s not out fault.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
