Monthly Archive

Tomorrow is the London mayoral election. So, unsurprisingly, Sunday, the Independent shared with readers an illuminating profile of a non-contender the Green party candidate for London mayor.

In the wide-ranging piece, readers were enlightened that Ms Siân (pronounced Shan) Berry has absolutely no personal experience of what it would seem many Londoners (some illegally) have done within the last decade to take up city residence:

…she hasn’t flown on holiday for 10 years…

We were also told she possesses one of the most divisive of school backgrounds insofar as the Indy would be concerned:

…went to Pate’s grammar school in Cheltenham…

So divisive, in fact, that in one article on grammars, the paper even felt the need to tell us twice.

Best of all, the Indy was quite impressed that she has the political experience to run a major world city that makes Sen Obama currently look like another Konrad Adenauer:

…claims to have had no political affiliation before joining the Green Party six years ago, aged 27…

She has almost no chance of winning. (If she does, it will rank as the biggest political upset in the history of the secret ballot.) And her being a member of a party that has even less of a likelihood than the Liberal Democrats (and theirs is already tiny) of ever forming a UK government, would seem to make any future national political aspirations of hers dicey indeed. Still, the paper was obviously taken enough by her to believe her worth that detailed profile.

Yet on what does the paper base it? Her intellect?:

…has an engineering degree from Oxford…

Her fortitude?:

…This morning she was in Mayfair’s Berkeley Square at 7.30am, wearing a pith helmet and beating a drum as part of a stunt demonstration against the Porsche dealership…

Her core issues?:

“My priorities are car clubs, more money for cycle lanes and 20p off public transport!”

Certainly not. The anti-Murdoch, non-sexist, Independent entitles the piece:

Will the woman described as ‘environmental Viagra’ turn us on to the Green Party?

Progressive indeed. We know already that the Independent believes Britain has quite a lot to learn from “Europe”. Yet in this instance perhaps it is a good thing the paper isn’t published in Norway or Denmark.

AOL UK:

A million eastern European immigrants have come to the UK since 2004 - but half have now gone…

They aren’t immigrants; they are EU citizens, fully entitled to live here, or not, as they choose. Anyway, never mind. Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph:

There comes a moment, under every Labour government, when the money runs out. We are reaching that moment now…

So whatever one terms those eastern Europeans, as the wife pointed out apparently they are as increasingly underwhelmed by Mr Brown’s Britain as are many of the natives.

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UPDATE: One of the most “hysterical” about the influx has always been the Daily Hysterical Mail, which of course chooses to find a way to be hysterical even about the apparent ebbing of the tide:

Poles now live in EVERY local authority in Britain as a million eastern Europeans move to UK since 2004

Good God, no. Of the ones who remain . . . they are EVERYWHERE.

Last year, The Independent had shared a list of 49 things “Europe” has done for Britain. (Their 50th was just silly.) The list was a bit confused in that it often mixed Europe and the European Union. It also had certain factual issue troubles.

For instance, right off the top:

1. The end of war between European nations

It might well be said that it was the Cold War that kept the peace and that the moment that ended, several wars broke out in (southeast) Europe (or, in other words, on the EU frontier). Therefore, it is hardly easily defensible to state that “Europe” (be it the continent or the EU) has ended war . . . between European nations.

And it suffered from weird repetitiveness:

11. No death penalty (incompatible with EU membership)

No EU member state has the death penalty and reintroduction of capital punishment would not be compatible with EU membership. Even countries outside the EU are having to review their policies if they want to be considered for membership of the club, most notably Turkey.

26. Prospect of EU membership has forced modernisation on Turkey

The presence of an affluent and stable bloc to its west has given the modernisers in Turkey the ally they needed to create a democratic constituency for change. That change has been pushed through with the promise of a European future.

And was at rather obvious cross-purposes on “climate change”:

16. Europe is helping to save the planet with regulatory cuts in CO2

23. easyJet and Ryanair can fly anywhere without national rules protecting high cost flag carriers due to liberalisation of air travel

But it was particularly proud of 40:

40. Human rights legislation has protected the rights of the individual

Although, not all individuals, it seems. Or, shall we say, “new” families. The BBC reports:

Two elderly British sisters have lost their final battle to avoid paying inheritance tax when one of them dies.

Joyce and Sybil Burden, aged 90 and 82 respectively, have lived together in Wiltshire all their lives.

The sisters appealed to the European Court to enjoy the same tax rights as married and gay couples, which do not apply to cohabiting siblings.

In a 15-2 vote, Human Rights judges in Strasbourg ruled they did not face unfair discrimination…

Maybe they should now declare themselves lesbian partners?

They can’t do that, of course. (Well, at least not yet.) Still, such minor blips certainly cannot take away from the fact that of course there are European positives. Indeed, who says Britain doesn’t need “Europe”? As for a real 50th, yours truly can here note having seen one personally:

(Photos by yours truly, April, 2008.)

If continental taxpayers are eager to pay for 50. livestock holding pens in the New Forest, it seems the least British taxpayers should be is thrilled.

Things must have been going really sour poll-wise after the Reverend’s recent public performance, for Sen Obama to feel he had to do this.

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UPDATE, April 30: USA Today:

…University of Maryland political scientist Ron Walters, however, warned that denouncing Wright could produce a black backlash against Obama. “He’s caught in a racial vise not of his own making,” Walters said.

True. It might. But assuming most black voters stay in his camp, this may win him many more white voters, upon whom (assuming he wins the nomination) his November general election hopes will invariably rest.

Newsweek’s Rod Nordland is perplexed:

Why Britain’s P.M. Is Popular Abroad But Hated At Home

You don’t need to read the piece.  I’ll tell you.  Short answer: because people abroad don’t live in Mr Brown’s Britain.

The Independent’s 29 year old Johann Hari claims to know about being 60; but in reality he seems to know about as little as any other under-30 knows about how it really feels:

When you hit your 60th birthday, most of you will guzzle down your hormone replacement therapy with a glass of champagne and wonder if you have become everything you dreamed of in your youth…

Meaning, he imagines. However, that is not nearly as bad as his subsequently pretty much imagining the development of the state of Israel.

…When it became clear these Palestinians would not welcome becoming a minority in somebody else’s country, darker plans were drawn up. Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, wrote in 1937: “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.”…

It is wonderful of course that a man who doesn’t remember Margaret Thatcher’s first election victory (or maybe he was just that precocious?) can write of David Ben-Gurion as if he had known him personally, and of those “darker plans” which he had helped brew, and, from 2008, can so confidently channel the mindset(s) that motivated desperate Jews of the 1930s and 1940s. However, his composing such a polemic on a remarkably complicated (and emotional) subject hardly leads one to be shocked Mr Hari is getting, urr, gently reminded that next time he might consider doing some better pre-publication fact checking.

Still, at least from this perspective it is a noteworthy piece. For it is oddly reassuring to be reminded how an Independent columnist actually (seems) to believe something tangible. Others can’t even muster the willingness to offer a stance on, for instance, whether women in Islam have the same rights as their sisters in the West. (Mr Hari himself is, alas, not immune, having bravely — seemed — to have supported the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s foul regime, and then, afterwards, bravely, suddenly he didn’t. Very Independent of him that.)

We regular Independent readers appreciate the paper’s editorial predictability: the only moral indignation it usually can muster (aside from the ethnic composition of model catwalks) is at the mere mention of George W. Bush, “climate change” . . . and Israel. And, yet again, we haven’t been let down. But the first of that lot will be gone from office less than a year from now. And the second will probably have run its course within the next few years — particularly once the next generation of scientists need to come up with a new way to secure research funding. (”You want to study climate change? I’ve got a pile of grant applications for that. What makes you different? Come up with something different.”)

But Israel? Since it isn’t going away, the Independent will likely be able to smash that country’s storefront windows until the paper itself finally goes out of business. Yet it needs more than Israel, which is why one always has to be prepared for any possible changing of the bogeymen guard in other areas. That may be why the paper appears to be nurturing a couple of other actual opinions, such as on British Airways. (Although, if Mr Bush’s successor turns out to be Sen McCain, one suspects Mr Hari and his colleagues will then simply transfer their night terrors to that President McCain, supported by regular out of context less than well-known statements from Theodore Roosevelt.)

So Mr Hari’s cri du coeur is really none too surprising emanating from the Independent. Far more disturbing, given that the paper has finally discovered blogging and reader comments . . . are the attitudes of some of Mr Hari’s commenters. Some make one’s blood run cold.

The other night, the wife and I had seen a re-run of Stephen Fry on “Who Do You Think You Are?“: an entire segment of his family was slaughtered in Auschwitz. “F*cking Auschwitz”, Mr Fry remarked tearfully. Fortunately, that there is, now, an Israel, means that there will never be another of those hells on earth, despite whatever immature sh*t drivel appears at your local news agent:

…How would we react if the 30m stateless, persecuted Kurds in the world sent armies and settlers into this country to seize everything in England below Leeds, and swiftly established a free Kurdistan from which we were expelled?…

That rather depends: for openers, was ancient Kurdistan centered below Leeds?

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UPDATE: Although, writing one’s mind can apparently get one put on trial in Ontario. The Independent probably needn’t worry, though. After all, its writers so rarely have anything substantive to say anyway.

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UPDATE 2, May 13: Mr Hari responds to critique . . . with a cutting intellect, smashing down weak rejoinders like a, well, know-it-all, tween-ager.

The Guardian jumps in this morning:

…A Newsweek poll published yesterday suggests that 19% of voters were not ready to elect an African-American president…

Which also seems to mean that 81 percent will vote for one. I was harsh yesterday, but only out of growing frustration (which some of you may share) with the demand that somehow white Americans are supposed to be totally smitten by Sen Obama . . . or they are backwards, racist idiots. No one tells me who to vote for (and certainly not in that manner): I will decide, for my own reasons, thank you very much.

So will other Americans, presumably. Now, as to the above poll: laugh at me if you will, but I don’t believe that Newsweek piece tells us what some in media obviously hope it does. Rather, I feel that oftentimes what many naysayers are revealing when they say “no” is that they aren’t ready, or willing (and should they be?) to elect a racial huckster.

And that’s because Americans do not elect an African-American president. They elect an American to be president. Media obviously doesn’t see the serious qualitative difference, but it’s a huge one.

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Also in Newsweek, Michael Hirsh explains — supported in part by his having enjoyed HBO’s “John Adams” and maybe an unmentioned viewing of “Gettysburg” — as to how the horrific “south-southwest” is strangling the country:

In the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee led an ill-advised incursion into Pennsylvania. His army was defeated at Gettysburg, and thence afterward Lee beat a fighting retreat until the South lost the Civil War. One hundred and forty-five years later, the South–or what has become the South-Southwest–has won another kind of Civil War. It has transformed the sensibility of the country. It is setting the agenda for our political, social and religious mores–in Pennsylvania and everywhere else…

…This region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants–the same ethnic mix King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics. After succeeding at that, they then settled the American Frontier, suffering Indian raids and fighting for their lives every step of the way. And the Southern frontiersmen never got over their hatred of the East Coast elites and a belief in the morality and nobility of defying them. Their champion was the Indian-fighter Andrew Jackson. The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage, unsophisticated set of mores. Traditionally, it has been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest. But that latter sensibility has been losing ground in population numbers–and cultural weight…

…On foreign policy, the realism and internationalism of the Eastern elitist tradition once kept the Southern-frontier warrior culture and Wilsonian messianism in check. Now the latter two, in toxic combination, have taken over our national dialogue, and the Easterners are running for the hills…

…John McCain, even with the GOP nomination in hand, would never dare repeat his brave but politically foolhardy condemnation of the religious right in 2000 as “agents of intolerance.” Why? Because we have become an intolerant nation, and that’s what gets you elected.

Actually, it isn’t about “southernism”, or region: as the piece reveals it’s mostly — of course — about religion. Specifically, certain forms of Christianity, including, now, Roman Catholicism.

Take Sen McCain of then, as opposed to now. That perhaps he has realized that he was wrong in 2000, and that “evangelicals” — some of whose “intolerant” religious predecessors undergirded the abolitionist movement — might take a bit of umbrage at being termed “intolerant” and simply wouldn’t want to vote for him because they aren’t nearly as “intolerant” as Mr Hirsh thinks they are, doesn’t even enter the equation. And that “Eastern elitists” of even 100 years ago may have viewed Christianity rather differently than Mr Hirsh seems to believe they did, and that some were also (at least somewhat) anti-Semitic (unlike today’s coarse “evangelicals”, who are generally considered by media like Newsweek to be just a little too pro-Israel), is conveniently overlooked also.

Still, let’s not quibble. We have just been treated to a fascinating discourse on an America grown so nasty, anti-intellectual and “intolerant” that the raised Episcopalian (the same hysterical version of Christianity practiced by the always hysterical George Washington) and now quietly “evangelical” Southern Baptist (the same denomination as that well-known bigot Harry S. Truman) Sen McCain trounced his major “evangelical” opponent on the way to an early sewing up of the Republican presidential nomination, and a black Christian Sen Obama whose father was a Muslim from Kenya appears likely to be the Democratic nominee. Yes, power to the frontiersman: undoubtedly, uncouth mobs of mountain Jacksonians, farm animals hitched to their wagons, will be gate-crashing the next inauguration, waving in one hand the Bibles they can barely read, while firing their guns into the air with the other and shouting “Hallelujah!”.

How much lower can we go, one wonders? Still further we plunge down the “intolerant” slope the country has slid since Jefferson v. Adams in 1800. Because, as we know, that was truly America’s tolerant, intellectual “Age of Pericles”.

In predictably entertaining intellectual Indy fashion, Leonard Doyle is closely following the ongoing saga created by a Democratic party nominating process which has enabled Sen Obama to approach the nomination:

…If Mr Obama cannot break through the submerged racial prejudice of older white voters, the argument of many Democrats goes, he cannot win the White House.

Interestingly, older white voters’ “racial prejudice” is deemed a given. It is doubtless because they are not rioting in the streets that their bigotry must be, by default, “submerged”. Although how it can be discerned to be “submerged” when one doesn’t know precisely if it is actually there is, shall we say, somewhere Mr Doyle doesn’t choose to tread.

And that is a terrible shame. Still, sensing already as we well-do of a predictable tendency on the part of many — especially journalists — easily to be dazzled by “royalty”, one can hazard a reasonable guess. Naturally, because those voters aren’t flocking to Sen Obama, what, honestly, other reasons might there be not to support renaming the national capital Obamaton unless one is harboring “submerged” racial animosity towards him? Any are utterly inconceivable.

On the other hand, it is common knowledge now that Sen Obama regularly gets around 90% of the black Democratic primary electorate vote, and that, all too often, there is nothing much “submerged” about the racial prejudices of his own pastor, and those held by numbers of those black voters. Yet their overwhelming preference for the black man has nothing to do with Sen Clinton’s being a white woman. Indisputable is that their support for him is rooted solely in the transcendental, existential, indeed interstellar, appeal of his politics.

So it is a tremendous relief to discover “submerged” racism doesn’t trouble everyone out here. And while Joe Klein doesn’t scribble for the Indy, his being quoted herein doesn’t lead one to bat an ideological eye. The for a time submerged anonymous author of the anti-Clinton “Primary Colors” informs us that, as if “Obama deniers” being unconstructed racists wasn’t bad enough, not to be blinded by Sen Obama’s aura is de facto to mark one out as constituting an (if I can somehow summon up the brains to remember how to spell this) imbecile:

Time magazine’s commentator Joe Klein said poorly educated white voters have grave doubts “about a young, inexperienced African-American guy with an Islamic-sounding name and a highfalutin fluency with language”…

It must be mentally exhausting being so intelligent, while trying somehow to reckon with the perpetually cockamamie opinions emanating from that myriad of undereducated white trash voters. They just don’t get it. Or they simply refuse to.

Thus they stagger on, reactionaries possessed of under-informed bigotries. Yes, only the village idiot could possibly have concerns over the likes of handing the White House to a U.S. senator who has been in office all of three years, who in 2007 was credited with that body’s most left-wing voting record, one whom the more he speaks publicly the less he says, who possesses such a thin (political) skin that to disagree with him on almost any subject is to question not just his honor but your own moral center, and whose clearly Arab-rooted middle name is, for some reason, never to be uttered in public. (Yet all necessary to reassert the lost right to speak one’s mind freely, as we know.) They really do need some “hi-er edgumacation.”

…Mr Obama tried gamely to make a connection with working-class white voters, downing beers and large quantities of greasy food. He was mocked for his incompetence on the bowling alley, but far more damaging in the eyes of white voters was his association with his hot-headed former pastor Jeremiah Wright…

More intriguing than either writer’s anthropological interpretations of the essentials of white, working-class Americanism is, particularly, Mr Doyle’s studied characterization of the Senator’s pastor. “Hot-headed”? Huh. So that is how we are to describe a minister who thunders that the U.S. government invented AIDS in order to engage in a genocidal campaign against “people of color”? A man whom Sen Obama stands by, and therefore seems likely to grace an Obama White House with his regular presence?

That’s before one even gets to the Senator’s having also been willing — quite pensively, as we know — to toss his own (white) grandmother to the political/racial mob. But wait, there’s more — “…the Obamas’ cozy relations with Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn…” — which is hardly of the slightest concern in terms of a presidential nominee. Yet another baseless assault on his honor, clearly. (Which the WaPo in February noted had not emerged into the “mainstream” until unjustifably outted in the muckraking British press by “the right-wing brother of the left-wing firebrand turned Iraq war supporter“: a description which itself is entirely relevant to the issue at hand, undoubtedly, given that that “right-wing brother” never supported the Iraq war.)

The New Black Panther Party’s recent endorsement of Sen Obama somehow went unmentioned by Mr Doyle. Also, the Hamas terror group’s (and even the EU labels it so) swooning over Sen Obama as another JFK — which, for some unfathomable reason hasn’t been headlined on Sen Obama’s campaign site — may have been made public just too late for Mr Doyle’s article. Yet one suspects Mr Doyle (and Mr Klein) finds both to be quite heartening, at least in terms of demonstrating the Senator’s stunning ability to bring together a truly diverse, thoughtful, global coalition.

So as to just why so many imbeciles white voters — and not just beer-downing, greasy food consuming, bowlers — might be a tad uneasy about a President Obama? Frightened cowerers, fearful of plunging into the future (opiated by their religion and keeping their gunpowder dry), they must be; it is their provincial shortcomings keeping them from failing to fall at his feet, worshipfully. (Or, put another way, their fear of “…the change that Obama offers…”, in the words of The Times’s ever-astute Simon Jenkins.) The real issue they should face is, how can they not embrace the “movement” that he embodies? After all, one prominent, white “lowfalutin” windbag political philosopher and social commentator does.

…David Axelrod, Mr Obama’s senior political adviser … sought to play down the importance of working-class voters, saying they had largely abandoned the Democrats in recent elections. Mr Obama’s appeal among black people, young voters, independents and even some Republicans would be more significant. “Let’s understand – the white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections,” said Mr Axelrod. “This is not new. Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on those votes.”…

We have perhaps there gotten a quick peek at the excellent coming general election strategy Mr Axelrod’s helping formulate: he thinks Sen Obama can secure a presidential victory from a base built upon left-wing college students (and, lest we forget, faculty), 90% of 12% of the population, (MENSA member, white) “independents” and (how many?) wayward (white) Republicans. He is either preparing himself to win which four states exactly, or he must have forgotten those millions he now flippantly dismisses who stuck by Democrat William Jefferson Clinton in two elections and through an impeachment. Or perhaps I’ve just forgotten: what were the names again of the other Democratic presidents elected since 1980, without backing from those reactionary, racist imbeciles white voters?

The BBC homepage has been promoting the channel’s new superhero:

Kirsty Young, crimefighter

Thankfully, the star columnist of The Independent speaks out at last:

…Poor British Airways. They can’t even ship off a crying man to Nigeria with the boys in blue to keep him quiet without passengers objecting and disrupting and disturbing their lovely aeroplanes. No wonder all the economy-class passengers were chucked off flight BA075 to Lagos on 27 March rather than have them object to the deportation of a crying man…

…Of course, it’s easy to be snotty with an airline that can be so haughty that it regards its own customers as an inconvenience. I won’t recount the episode some years ago when I was asked at Heathrow if I had any sharp implements in my hand baggage. I do not have any sharp implements in my hand baggage, I replied. That was not good enough. “Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’, Sir,” I was admonished…

…I don’t mean to be rude, but – after the catastrophe of Terminal Five – don’t you realise that the most disruptive institution at Heathrow is called British Airways?…

Ah, but there is an escape, we are told:

…I fly Air France – everywhere – and say this in all innocence. Other than a frequent-flyer card I have no financial interest in this excellent airline, and I urge British Airways passengers to transfer their affections to Air France next time they have to travel long distance…

It is saddening to discover that all of us regular BA customers will not as a result ever enjoy his scintillating on board conversation. Yet we do understand why. We had simply had had no idea how, in contrast to the appalling BA . . .

“…passengers on an Air France flight to Lagos tried to prevent the plane from taking off when they learned that a Nigerian youth was being deported against his will…”

“Air France flights to and from Los Angeles, California, were canceled … amid fears of a possible terrorist strike…”

“Thousands stranded on day five of Air France strike“

. . . traveling on Air France is toujours le bliss.

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UPDATE: Then again, perhaps Mr Fisk is just a bit put out . . .

“I feel very proud to be part of something so professional and good-looking.”
John Simpson, columnist and BBC world affairs editor

. . . over not being a headlining, regular contributor to BA’s “High Life” magazine, when a certain someone else is?

The Press Association:

Further warnings urging motorists not to panic-buy have been issued on the eve of a planned strike at a giant oil refinery.

It is feared the walkout by 1,200 workers at the Grangemouth site in Scotland could hit fuel supplies, potentially causing disruption to services across the country…

…Over the last week the Government has sought to assure the public that the country has enough fuel to cope with the strike. Despite this, there have already been reports of shortages and queues at some forecourts.

After having worked people all up with worry, typical media, now passing along government statements not to “panic”. Actually, most people probably feel that when this Government says “Don’t panic!” . . . is precisely when they should probably start to think about doing so. We are about as far from Scotland as one can get, and the three nearest petrol stations this morning were even more packed than they were late yesterday afternoon.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “One of the most important messages to give is that people should not change their normal fuel buying patterns. We urge the people of Scotland to be sensible and only to buy the fuel that they need.”

Incidentally, is there an independent Scotland, that it has a “Government”, you ask? Well, not quite yet. For the moment, call it (r)evolution by marketing.

Consul-at-Arms:

re: “New State Department lexicon forbids use of the words “jihad” or “jihadist”"

Has it really? He above, who might have been one of those who’d been passed the good word, says, urr, he hasn’t:

Rather than saying something like “while I can neither confirm nor deny,” let me say this: while I’ve seen this elsewhere in the blogosphere (and showing every sign of being circular reporting), I haven’t seen this in any official guidance from the State Dept.

Obviously, that State employee hasn’t gotten the memo, of which “Jihad Watch”, which is in possession of the “scoop”, tells us:

…I will publish more information on this when possible.

We look forward to it. Although, in the short term, some information, period, actually might have been nice. However, the concerns of that blogger are understandable, given the name of his blog.

So lacking an insider’s insider take, and unwilling to wait for the sequel, yours truly chose to undertake some time-consuming personal research into this matter, and can now publish this information:

In a search that took “0.28 seconds”, there were 1,590 mentions of “jihad” on the State web site as of April 25. Then, minutes later, yesterday:

. . . another search of the exact same word turned up an additional 60 mentions. It is hard to know what may be in a pipeline, of course. However, this blog is willing to go out on an informational limb and assert that if indeed already promulgated it doesn’t appear that the Secretary’s demand “absolutely forbidding the use” of the terms has made it ’round the official houses just yet.

Obviously, its use is not quite “forbidden”. It seems this is typically overheated web carrying on. For as another State employee notes:

…I looked around a bit and found that there is indeed official Department guidance [I emphasize "guidance," not a ban of any kind] for talking about terrorism with those pesky foreigners. What’s more, it says pretty much what Jihad Watch alleges: that officials should avoid using various terms that would have unintended effects, one of those terms is “Jihad,” and one of the unintended effects of using it would be to legitimize our enemies actions in the mind of our audience…

Essentially, they are to be thoughtful and careful.  Which is what diplomacy is about.  And which we had also thought blogging was about.  But never mind.

We had to fill our car today. (We were down to fumes.) The cost was bad enough (mostly courtesy of Her Majesty’s Government’s take). But even worse was that the petrol (gas) station about an hour ago was jammed.

After waiting over 10 minutes, the guy ahead of us finally filled up his not exactly little car . . . with all of £8 worth, or between 1-2 gallons. That’s called being an idiot topping up. And why? This blog has its suspicions:

Media, media, media. Always our friendly reporters scaring people. In this case, by harping all over distant problems in refineries, etc., that will be sorted out before any local tap actually runs dry and impacts the pumps if people just followed normal routines.

But all too typically overwrought reporting naturally causes fear. And (to adapt the words of a well-known philosopher) fear leads to worry, and worry leads to topping up, which leads your local station to run dry unnecessarily.

At one point in the above report, Reuters also tells us:

…The strike has caused fears of fuel shortages in Scotland and Northern England and triggered sharp rises in European diesel, gasoline and UK gas prices this week…

“The strike has?” Hmmm. And from where, pray tell, do people like Mr “Two Gallons” get his “fears”? Are they watching TV, listening to the radio and reading the net? Or do they all know someone at that Forties pipeline?

If petrol supplies at local stations are used up within hours, it won’t be because of a shortage of supplies. It will be because of our helpful suppliers of “information”.

The BBC reports:

…Glyn Travis of the Prison Officers Association says inmates are happy to stay inside because they can get hold of drugs, mobile phones and even sex.

He said a dealer regularly broke into a Yorkshire prison by using a ladder to enter cell windows - but no inmate used the ladder as a means of escape…

…”It was an extraordinary case because none of the prisoners inside tried to escape, when no doubt they had the opportunity.

“It tells me something is wrong in society when people are breaking in to prisons to bring in drugs, but the prisoners are quite happy to stay inside,” Mr Travis said…

Maybe it is at least partly because they know they will be watched far more closely away from prison, than inside one?

The Telegraph’s Toby Harnden:

Hillary Clinton can’t see that it’s over

Mr Harnden relates how Democrats are almost unanimous in rejecting Sen Clinton in favor of the man who will certainly win the presidency. Well, unanimous except for the roughly half of Democrats who keep voting for her. If only that irritating woman — she of the unmitigated gall to wish to pursue her candidacy until that candidacy is defeated is somehow a gloulish “Carrie” who refuses to die — would just stop winning major races, go away, and let the long media-anointed future president continue his victory lap.

Republicans should not interfere when their opposition is about to make an error of the first magnitude.

One has had a sense for some time that Democrats wanted JFK, Jr., but as fate caused him to be unavailable they’ve convinced themselves they’ve found his generational replacement. Unfortunately, there is no explaining to them that they may instead be about to nominate their least electable (meaning, particularly, left-wing) presidential candidate in 40 years. The consequence: while they dream of waking up on an upcoming November Wednesday morning with another Kennedy, they appear rather more likely to find themselves beside another George McGovern, craving his waffle.

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UPDATE: “Obama for President” press release heading:

Obama: Campaigning with a message of hope

Sorry, sorry, I meant Reuters headline.

This has been getting a great deal of blog interest. However, I thought that rather than jump in immediately myself, it was worth pondering and seriously considering whether actually it “may or may not be true“. The BBC reports:

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth…

…The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice…

…One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca’s was in perfect alignment to magnetic north…

Are “Muslims scientists” merely scientists who are Muslims, or are they more akin to “Christian scientists“? Unfortunately, Beeb writer Magdi Abdelhadi doesn’t say. Presumably, though, non-Muslim scientists will now be welcomed in that city to do their fieldwork, to corroborate this remarkable, new finding?

Unlikely, to say the least. Religion Facts tells us:

…non-Muslims are strictly prohibited from entering Mecca and Medina. Roadblocks are stationed along roads leading to the city. The most famous incident of a non-Muslim visiting Mecca was the visit by the British explorer Sir Richard Burton in 1853. Burton disguised himself as an Afghani Muslim to visit…

Interestingly, non-Catholics are not banned from visiting the Vatican. In any event, evidently everyone else must simply take their “scientific” word for this discovery. But is it really about “the science”, given that same geologist had also informed us:

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed…

Curiously, it was apparently “imperialist” for the most interested parties to arrive at an international agreement necessary for international navigation. But for members of a religious group to demand that agreement now be scuttled (no pun intended) and re-oriented to accommodate their religious demands? Unimperialist in the slightlest, undoubtedly.

For it is worth noting — because, again, the BBC doesn’t in this piece — that GMT and longitude are not about British imperialism per se. They have a bit more to do with the reality that Britain was the foregoing sea user of the 18th and 19th centuries (as Christians measure time), and its government had wanted to solve a navigation problem which heretofore hadn’t apparently particularly troubled anyone dwelling on the Arabian peninsula. According to the National Maritime Museum’s history of the imperialist Royal Observatory:

…A disaster at sea in 1707 killed over 2000 men and prompted greater calls for more reliable means of navigation. In 1714, Parliament established a panel of experts, the Board of Longitude, and offered a massive £20,000 reward (equivalent of about £2 million today) to anyone who could solve the problem of finding longitude at sea. It took nearly 60 years for the prize to be claimed. In the end it went not to a famous astronomer, scientist or mathematician, but to a little-known Yorkshire carpenter turned clockmaker, John Harrison…

Actually, the museum has there overstated the number killed. According to The Council of the Isles of Scilly Association Commemoration Group 2007, it was 1,450. And insofar as developing an agreement on GMT itself is concerned:

…The Greenwich Meridian was chosen to be the Prime Meridian of the World in 1884. Forty-one delegates from 25 nations met in Washington DC for the International Meridian Conference. By the end of the conference, Greenwich had won the prize of Longitude 0º by a vote of 22 in favour to 1 against (San Domingo), with two abstentions (France and Brazil)…

One of the main reasons for its choice, as the museum notes, was “at the time, 72% of the world’s commerce depended on sea-charts which used Greenwich as the Prime Meridian.” Another was that:

…the USA had already chosen Greenwich as the basis for its own national time-zone system.

Surprisingly, these Muslim “scientists” somehow overlooked that the accursed Americans were really the major manipulative force behind GMT. But not everyone overlooks obvious facts. The Independent’s Mary Dejevsky is probably also relieved to learn that it is all at least in part the fault of the Americans, for as she also helpfully informs us:

…Qatar shows is that it is quite possible to have prosperity, development and education while retaining principles that might be thought incompatible. New technology – computers, mobile phones, satellite communications – is ubiquious. But it can be harnessed as effectively to someone else’s priorities and worldview, as it can be to ours. To operate an iPod does not require a Western outlook. Your ringtone might be the Muslim call to prayer.

The view that women in a Muslim society necessarily enjoy fewer rights than we do may or may not be true…

With that latter telling insight, we see once again why we love the Independent: its writers never fail to seize a controversial subject firmly and intellectually wrestle it to the ground, unapologetically.

That said, given how we have gotten to where we are now technologically, in all likelihood it is more likely than not (not just, in this case, “may or may not”) that if it were not for the “Western outlook”, there would not today be computers, mobile phones, satellite communications, and iPods in existence for them to be “harnessed effectively” in present-day Qatar. Just like, because the Isles of Scilly do not lie off the coast of Arabia, there would not be GMT.

Whenever Erik goes on a tear, resist any urge just to scroll down or click away. Read along closely for the entire ride. By the end (I won’t cite excerpts of this one because, frankly, quotes don’t do it justice) you’ll have generally learned quite a bit.

The flailing re-commences. The Press Association:

Labour rebels today called off their revolt over the abolition of the 10p income tax rate after Alistair Darling promised to compensate poor households who will lose out from the change…

There’s the quick turn-about that was not unexpected.

Whew! But that was close. So, now that that’s settled, it’s time to get the — “available only at certain out of the way still open post offices, between 10-12 on the second Tuesday of odd numbered months, maybe you can qualify in some, particular cases, after supervisory review and a home visit, as well as an assessment of how many vowels there are in your mother’s maiden name and what your address’s first letter happens to be…” — “exemption” forms ready.

But there is less spin than there used to be, thankfully.

Last night, I wasn’t feeling particularly great, so the wife took the salmonella hound out for his normal evening constitutional. She came back to tell me she had had an uncomfortable moment on the trek to the post box, when they had come across a roaming loaded gun bull terrier.

Not exactly what one wants to stumble upon 10:30 at night, off a leash. Fortunately, nothing came of it. The dog exchanged sniffs with ours, and then strolled off in another direction.

Seconds later, a 20ish guy on a bike appeared from around a corner, cycling after it on the empty street. He sped by the wife, joined suddenly by a girl who came running around another corner. Both were calling to the dog, to try to get it to come to them, “Slasher! Slasher!”

Happy St George’s Day.

Looks more than a bit like a certain proposed Operation Sea Lion:

Continentals, always fantasizing about somehow getting across — and/or renaming — the English Channel.

Ho, hum. Yet another morning after a day which sees our future president Sen Obama still unable to prevail in a Democratic primary in a large, diverse state that is reasonably reflective politically and population-wise of the entire country.

Given his obvious inability to win in all (save for his adopted home state) of the large electoral college states required to secure the presidency, perhaps now is a good time for Sen Obama to begin to consider dropping out of the race?

Agence France-Presse:

If elected to the White House John McCain would be the oldest man to become president at age 72, but his top adviser said on Thursday the Republican candidate’s age posed no problem.

The oldest man at 72? But aren’t all men, when 72, the same age? (Just kidding: couldn’t resist AFP’s awkward phrasing there.)

“I don’t think it’s much of an issue,” Charles Black, senior adviser to the Republican senator, told MSNBC.

“If you talk to the reporters who cover McCain, who go out with him on 14- and 15-hour days, sometimes seven-day weeks, they see the energy level that tells them that age is not an issue,” Black said.

He spoke a day after Democratic lawmaker John Murtha, 75, a Vietnam war veteran and supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton’s White House candidacy, said McCain was too old to be president.

“This one guy running is about as old as me. Let me tell you something, it’s no old man’s job,” Murtha said…

Although outwardly certain they will sweep all before them in November, Democrats somehow also seem a bit on edge over their actually having to fight an election in which they face a seasoned Republican opponent. (Apparently, the Democratic nominee is supposed to be acclaimed caesar president by the adoring Democratic- only crowd in the Forum.) For one may also recall that a couple of months back it was Sen McCain’s Panama Canal Zone military birth that many hoped would miraculously somehow disqualify him. This month, it’s his age.

The level of angst is demonstrated by Rep Murtha (and others) willing to go to the lengths of unconstitutionally arguing (evidently only half-jokingly) that Sen McCain is chronologically “too old” to be president. Yet about any Democrats perhaps being too young they have nothing to say? After all, while there is constitutionally no presidental age ceiling, the Constitution actually DOES bar the presidency to those under 35 years of age.

And if you think about that, if anything that younger age is even scarier today. For given how Western societies are increasingly delaying the onset of adulthood, “age 35″ in 2008 is all too often a rather different maturity level of “35″ than was the case in 1789.

However, on the upper end, in 1789 age 65 was generally considered elderly. George Washington, 57 upon taking office, was considered aging. Yet much longer life expectancy has by now rendered that same 65 often just this side of “mid-life”. Indeed, and for some, it’s still not quite full adulthood.

Given such, when in one’s forties nowadays one probably shouldn’t even feel in possession of nearly enough life experience to be president. But at least in supporting Sen Clinton, Rep Murtha thinks there’s nothing wrong with a woman being president. And — especially given his being a Democrat — presumably there is also nothing problematic about being in a wheelchair.

Which is how it should be. But given that increasingly delayed maturity, it is also actually possible that neither Sen Clinton or even a 72 year old Sen McCain are as of yet even wholly experienced enough for the presidential role of today. That’s to say nothing of the third major aspirant. In his forties, he (of no middle name which may be uttered publicly) has to date impressively set himself apart from those opponents by having been, over his “long” career thus far, a “community organizer”, state legislator (for 15 minutes), U.S. senator (also for 15 minutes so far) and a church-goer.

But we always have to vote for a politician, and not a messiah perfection, of course. Still, it is worth asking ourselves if we have suffered entirely too long from the “youthful leader syndrome”? For most of us probably believe the presidency should be a capstone, the last role from which a politician then heads into retirement, and NOT some mid-career job.

George Washington, remember, died within three years of leaving office. He hadn’t yet reached 68. Thus he was unable to spend subsequent decades pursuing his own post-presidential personal foreign policy, while blundering around the globe.

The Independent recently upgraded its web site to the point of its now being almost pleasant to browse. (Previously, it had been rather drab . . .

. . . and spelling difficulties don’t seem quite the problem they had been, either.) And the paper thankfully also ditched pay per article some time ago. So the Indy is now easier on the internet eye and (insofar as one can tell) pretty much wholly available online.

In comparison, the Express’s web site seems suspended somewhere in the web stone age (c. 1999). Many avocational blogs are far better. Even worse, in only providing a few articles online (in comparison to its most direct market competitor, the Mail), it is now probably the weakest online content-providing major (semi-serious) UK newspaper.

Strangely, though, both realities don’t necessarily add up to the problem they otherwise might. For if it were far better and more complete online, many more out there globally might spellbindingly click over and take in the likes of Express journalism such as this opener (which I scanned as a photo for your entertainment) from Peter Sheridan, byline Los Angeles, April 19 (via my wife, who had stumbled upon it and couldn’t contain herself):

AT WEEKENDS, John Paulson likes to walk past the trellised roses, beyond the lily pond to the spa and pool overlooking the pristine lake on his 10-acre estate where his Georgian-style mansion rests in the elite seaside resort of the Hamptons in upstate New York…

Yes, unfortunately, given that so many excellent Express pieces remain “print-only”, you actually must fork over hard-earned cash to enjoy quality reporting such as that.

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However, as bad and ideologically distorted as British newspapers sometimes may be, they are often founts of wonder and news-providing encyclopedias compared to major U.S. papers. Why we tolerate it