Recently in Politics Category

I'm totally out of touch, I only found out a few days ago about lolcats. The timing was just right however. Up until now I have been quietly watching our economy and state of affairs in Britain worsen and we can fairly point the finger of blame at those in charge. (Of course they'll be blaming the electorate shortly) Truly: life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel. I present you with (hopefully the very first) LOLMP, my new satire on those who got us in this mess:

Over the last eight or nine months I've become quite a fan of the famous website www.housepricecrash.co.uk . It was good to have a different slant on things. I have to say that lately the excitement factor seems to be wearing off a little, maybe this is due to very good evidence that Britain's house prices are coming down again. Today they took much longer to post the news about the Bank of England's interest rate decision for example. It remains to be seen whether or not we are on the brink of a huge crash of prices, with an inevitable recession, or whether Gordon Brown's miracle economy will keep surging on. Reading their news items back to 2004, when the site started, you can see that there was the distinct possibility of a crash four years ago, but it did not transpire. The terrorist attacks in London of 2005 caused a distinct wobble, however the prices surged on for another two years.

The Ongar is dead, long live the Ongar!

Some might say that we're entering a bright new era of government as Gordon Brown steps in (without contest) to take the helm of our Country and the Labour Party.

For me, and my cynical mind, I doubt much will change. Apparently Brown is much less pro-Euro than Blair was, and maybe there will be some differences in approach here. For the most part however I cannot see much benefit to the country. Also the way in which the handover has happened automatically, Brown's coronation appearing to be merely a 'fix', simply does not inspire confidence in the government. The chances of exciting and improved policy change seem also pretty slight.

To quote a Victorian bride-to-be's saying "To change the name, but not the letter, is a change for the worse, and not the better."

I like the Olympic games, even though it will cost a lot to put on I'm sure there may be some longer-term benefits from the inward investment. Unfortunately I suspect some things may not change:

We in Cambridge are in the rather ignominious position of having risen to fame in recent hours thanks to the arrest of a local man suspected of carrying out the recent letter bombing campaign that has been cleverly down-played by the media. In this time where environmental impact is being discussed so relentlessly why is this dichotomy of freedom versus the environment coming to a head only now?

Ever since the News of the World broke the story at the weekend that Mark Oaten, former Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman, enjoyed the company of young male prostitutes, I have been mulling over the phrase "humiliate him with a bizarre sex act too revolting to describe".

I have today been passed information from my man in Westminster that would indicate that Mr Oaten's preferred way of being humiliated was to have rent-boys defecate on his chest or to urinate on him, whilst he proceeded with getting his rocks off.

Whether this is in fact what happened I doubt we'll ever find out, but it certainly ranks up there in the too revolting to describe (except on seedy second rate websites) category.

What is interesting is that rumours have also been surfacing recently about fellow Lib Dem MP and total heterosexual [1], Simon Hughes, who was alleged to have paid a prostitute to deposit little brown fishies in her knickers, which he then carried round in his briefcase. This sounds too bizarre to be true, but then we all know the fate of Stephen Milligan MP, who died in February 1994 after a bizarre sex act that went horribly wrong. He of course died of asphyxiation after strangling himself with an electric flex, whislt wearing stocking, suspenders and a black bin-liner over his head, complete with an orange in his mouth. A tragic case of auto-erotic sex gone horribly wrong.

Anyway, back to the point, it looks like that only leaves Menzies Campbell in the running, unless you count that new boy that no one knows the name of. You too will be able to order your commemorative "Ming Vases" from the Franklin Mint shortly after his coronation as Lib Dem leader.

[1] Simon Hughes of course hired black teenage male research assistants purely for assisting him with the process of dealing with parliamentary work, and any insinuation of sexual activity between them is absolutely false.

[ Hot off the press - our London correspondent has just filed this report with me ]

The hyperbole predictably spewed forth by the official media in Kuwait about the death of their head of State, Emir Jaber AlAhmed AlSabah, was correct in one aspect: his was a crucial reign, spanning a period of time during which Kuwait and its environs underwent drastic and tumultuous changes.

Kuwait has an almost unique position in the modern Arab world in that the country has a constitution that was written in good faith. Apart from Lebanon no other modern Arab state has a proper constitution. And, far better than Lebanon’s, the Kuwaiti constitution is a genuine national political document, whereas Lebanese democracy was never little more thinly-veiled sectarianism. Although Kuwait never enjoyed the personal and political freedoms Lebanon had prior to its all too predictable civil war, Kuwait did possess a sounder political infrastructure enshrined in its constitution.

The problem was that pre-independence, pre-1961 Kuwait was a medieval social and political entity with the ruling family in particular, the AlSabah, retaining a medieval view of themselves, their place in society and, indeed, their right to rule. This was in direct contradiction to the constitution that clearly established their role within a legal, rather than tribal, framework. If the foresight of the formers of this constitution, which included the then Emir Abdullah AlSalem, was that the ruling family would evolve and modernise, history has proven them badly mistaken, and that mistake was finally paid for in the reign of Jaber AlAhmed.

I don't know the reasons behind the government's keenness to pass this bill, and I don't care (the old difference between ignorance and indifference again). Whilst in my local non-smoking pub tonight I did start considering the possible effects that the new legislation might have.

Firstly we have the social impact. Some of the criticisms of the current licensing laws is that they are outdated, and also the common 11pm licence rule means that people try to get down as many drinks as possible before closing time. This latter fact has been blamed for the binge drinking culture that our society currently suffers from.

It seems that the basic premise will bring pub, and other licensed outlets into a more continental style of opening time. However, the new law does not address our other European divergence from alcohol retail, the duty levied on alcoholic beverages. In my travels around Europe I've seen a few different cultures, and very roughly speaking you can divide European alcohol attitudes into one of two categories. The first, and most noticeable in places like France, Italy, Germany, is the typical continental attitude, low duties, very flexible hours of sale. The second attitude, more prevalent in Northern, or Scandinavian, European countries is that of the high duty, stronger restrictions on hours of sales. I would say that on balance Britain has been traditionally more in line with the Scandinavian legislature. The new ruling will cause the start of an interesting disparity.

So on the one-hand pubs will be able to stay open longer, if granted a licence, but will those places necessarily attract more business? I don't think so, there's a finite limit to how many people want to drink and how much those people do drink. Initially there may be a bit more bingeing, more violence, unrest, puke on the street etc., but things will probably settle down eventually.

My guess is that people will still drink the same amount, but it will be over a longer period of time, but the bars and outlets will be open for longer, so their overheads will increase, it may create some interesting employment problems for them too. Higher costs, mean drink prices will go up, magnified by our already over the top alcohol duties. If (and I can't predict the future) and when this happens I think many outlets will see less trade and then close. We have not even begun to discuss the issue of what will happen when the proposed smoking ban comes in to force!

The extreme position is that the majority of pubs and bars left in five or ten years will be very expensive chains that do not serve food. The common boozer will probably disappear, hopefully the classic country pub will survive based on the charm of such places, we shall see...

Whatever happens my personal advice, like on the adverts, is to enjoy your drink responsibly.

So said senior conservative councillor Keith Myers-Hewitt to a librarian upon entering a library in Stowmarket in August 2004. The librarian in question said he knew it was a reference to race "because as he spoke, Cllr Myers-Hewitt glanced at two black gentleman sitting near an oriental couple who were using the library's computer.

This all went to a tribunal recently, and although they ruled that Keith Myers-Hewitt did in fact make an offensive remark about 'darkies', he did not bring his office into disrepute. One presumes this is because it isn't considered disreputable for his office to be racist.

Of course, he trots out the usual excuses, for example:

1) He claimed he did not speak to [the librarian] but said he had made a remark to his wife which could have been mistaken for the alleged comments. (I welcome examples of possible remarks which could have misconstrued, e.g. it's dark in this library, looks like they have a couple of chinks in the electrical wiring", -Ed)

2) He was ill at the time, and has just been released from hospital. Of course, I sympathise entirely with this, I often find after an extended illness I go round being offensive to coloured gentlemen.

3) The remarks were out of character.

4) He claimed he was a sci-fi fan, and that the words "people from the dark side" were not a racial slur, but a reference to the evil side of the 'force' famous for turning Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. Quite, and I'm sure he thought we were all born yesterday. Fortunately the tribunal investigating the claims said the evidence of Keith Myers-Hewitt and his wife had been implausible. That's "bullshit" in laymans terms.

Sadly, this kind of behaviour from conservative councillors is not a one off. Two of the editors on this site were most suprised to hear a conservative councillor from Cambridgeshire tell us once that he was applying to become a Justice of the Peace, and I quote "God help any women and niggers that come up before me". Fortunately he didn't get selected for the post. There are plenty of other examples of such comments.

Anyway, these people do nothing for the cause of the conservative party in this country, and as a member of the conservatives since my youth, this kind of behaviour really irks me, and is obviously one of the reasons why the tory's have such a poor reputation amongst an extended part of this countries population.

Still, we can hope that as bigoted racist dinosaurs like this die out, these kinds of attitudes will die with them.

References:

http://www.buryfreepress.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=843&ArticleID=1064832 - 'Racist' remark was sci-fi quote
http://www.buryfreepress.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=843&ArticleID=1127711 - No action over 'Darkie' remark

Something I came across whilst doing the tiny bit of research necessary for the previous article (make poverty history), was a 1997 study by the US Department of Agriculture entitled "Estimating and Addressing America's Food Losses".

The amount of food wasted by the US (and I guess other similarly advanced countries) is absolutely staggering.

Out of 162 million tonnes of food available for consumption in the USA in 1995, 44 million tonnes was wasted by "food retailers, consumers and foodservice establishments". That is almost 30% of the total amount of food produced for human consumption!

Fresh fruit, vegetable, milk, grain, sugar and corn syrup accounted for two-thirds of wasted food.

What is truly criminal about this is that not only was the value of this wasted food estimated at over $31 billion but it is estimated that this would have fed up to 49 million people.