"...I've got a recipe for cosmic flan"
I suppose that's what the SONG is about then.
Posts
Out and about with our community
2 days ago
Wednesday, August 20
Hey are you going to burning man?
Wednesday, August 13
Wordpress hysteria
Lots of furore today in the blogosphere. What's the hot topic?
No not the continued rape and pillage of Georgian civilians! Its the redesigned Wordpress Number 10 website!
Fawkes
Dale
Dizzy
Rouse
I'd like to be a little hypocritical having not said much about Georgia and point out that the only benefit that appears to have flowed from the redesign is that you can't see the Government consultations page any more!
Oh well, consultations are mostly for show anyway.
Friday, August 8
Wish you were here
The Middle East peace envoy sent a digital postcard with the charming message:
"Wish I was back?"Will he have your support for the EU presidency?
(The image is Banksy)
Stop pointing at us!!!
So the Tory myface, spacebook and titter ads are increasing apace to the point where I don't have enough time to give them the ridicule they deserve!
Today's apparently depicts an extra from Take That. Forget Lord Kitchener, if anyone could send me into battle against the hun it would be Robbie Williams' body double.
(Posts on LADY BLUE RINSE and the origional GRANPAPPY VETERAN)
Oath of allegiance
The Mail reports a group of 22 MPs wish to end the oath of allegiance to the Queen, but rather to swear an oath to the nation and constituents.
I believe this is absurd. In constitutional terms the monarchy is the state as it is the only confluence of all pillars of the state (not society in case you're confused Maggie).
This needn't be dictatorship or autocracy as power is totally bestowed, and always constitutionally on loan, and as we know the office is wholly nominal in that sense.
Now we can discuss different forms of Government as many have done in many different ways, emotive, practical etc. I prefer practical: the outcome for the democracy.
I believe a modern (emaciated) constitutional monarchy is a constitutional bedrock of protection of liberty against a slide to tyranny because the monarchy is the only fulcrum around which the pillars of the state are connected. End it and we end this safeguard. The end of the oath would end the connection between Parliament, Government and the Monarchy.
I have little time for this group of MPs position because they seemingly fail to understand the British constitutional arrangement. Their position is emotive, even laudable, but not intellectually sound. They are not proposing the only serious tested alternative which could safeguard our way of life, a republic. I have much sympathy republicanism, I just don't think the system would provide any advantage practically, and I believe it runs greater danger of perversion, for which there are a great many historical precedents. As a political creed it is no longer necessary, and is driven by something other than a democratic imperative, usually a misguided sense of perpetual class war. Andy I fear collateral from tearing up our unwritten constitutional documents which would be necessary for any change of the monarch's role.
To end the monarchy in our constitution, it must naturally be replaced else there would effectively be anarchy, and a stasis which would undermine the social contract, producing tyranny. There is nothing less frightening with which to replace an emaciated modern monarchy which has more than proved itself as a stable bedrock of a constitutional state.
Before you ask, yes this is the first time in my life that I have found myself in agreement with Lord Tebbit!
Thursday, August 7
Hold the front page!
Definitely the best headline of the week.
You know the credit crunch is biting when the Sport covers it.
Wednesday, August 6
Lord Kitchener LOL
The Tories have produced another hilarious Lord Kitchener advert for their facebookmyspacebeboetc attempts.
ROFL!
I don't expect any questions from Tories about what that means as they are all part of the myspace generation now.
The new ad is some sort of blue-rinse Kitchener bastardisation with a big Britain-needs-you-to-die point coming from the sky like some kind of frightening national lottery advert.
Click HERE to see their previous and even funnier ad.
Tuesday, August 5
Climate Camp protest, Kingsnorth
(Daniel Berehulak)
(Gareth Fuller)
These are two of my favourite pictures so far from the Climate Camp (from the Guardian)
Monday, August 4
Davie's syllabus
I thought the Conservative party were opposed to the 'top down' intellectual dictatorship of the national curriculum. They say they are happy teachers to have greater freedom to imbue their teaching with their own diverse academic knowledge.
Strange that Cameron-central has given ambitious Tories a reading list, so minions might better imagine the mind of the Great Leader-in-waiting.
Next he'll be telling them all what to think.
(The list in full)
Recycling fines in Brent
Residents in Brent failing to recycle face council fines of up to £1,000 or a fixed penalty notice from today.
Its a strong measure which will make it quite clear that failing to recycle when the facilities are widely available is antisocial. Yet the means must be readily available at all times and I hope the poverty of many of the residents in Brent will be taken into account in individual cases.
Furthermore, I find it absurd that a citizen in a very deprived and overlooked area can receive such an extreme reprimand, while papers, tin and anything picked up by cleaners in tube stations is simply dumped in the same bag and thrown away.
Positioning from Boris
In the Times Boris Johnson says he will approach David Cameron with his "own blueprint for Britain". "If the Conservatives are going to be coming into power next time around, then let's share ideas and let's work something up together."I think people underestimate his ambition. He has already demonstrated his capacity for the sort of unilateral diplomacy that Ken was famous for when prematurely backed Obama. Cameron followed suit but he can't have been pleased, the move is extremely foolish for a party with strong prospects for power.
I doubt Cameron can fail now, but if he does, Johnson will be waiting.
Friday, August 1
Diego Garcia
Some time ago I BLOGGED to say that I believed there was a strong possibility that FCO Ministers had been given 'deniability' by civil servants, the secret intelligence service and US officials.
Further pressure has now emerged on the Foreign Secretary David Miliband as he faces fresh claims that he was "duped by the US on a colossal scale"
When people talk of the special relationship they tend to think of political cooperation and alliance, and to a lesser extent cultural trade. The trans-Atlantic relationship has gone through peaks and troughs but some historians have argued that the constant, which has held the relationship together was the strength and continuity of the close relationship between our respective intelligence services (witness the Falklands where our intelligence services secretly worked together even while America was officially a non-aligned ally of both Argentina and Britain, and mediating peace negotiations).A former senior American official told Time magazine that in 2002 and possibly 2003, the US imprisoned and interrogated at least one terrorist suspect on the island.
Mr Miliband has repeatedly denied claims the US has detained terror suspects on British territory.
But the anonymous source, described as a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings, told Time a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said "high-value prisoners" had been held and questioned on the island.
The official also claimed the US may have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia's territorial waters. - Press Association
There is every reason to believe that the activities of US secret services on British territory were known to SIS and most probably the FCO at some level.
In 25 years when historians gain access to the archives, we may have a major re-evaluation of the relationship between senior Ministers and their enormous departments, and perhaps even of the nature of total ministerial responsibility itself which is arguably an illogicality in the modern mega-state.
Then again maybe not.
Guido's graph
Look at Guido's graph of YouGov results of answers to the question of who would Labour be better off, GB or TB?
I think its high time he turned his hand to campaign literature, I haven't seen a more brazenly manipulative graphic in ages!
What's in the name?
The Times reports that missing Lib Dem mega-donor Michael Brown has changed his name in an attempt to avoid detection...
...to Michael Campbell-Brown.
Not exactly the most evasive of measures.
Perhaps he became tired of sharing the Great Leader's tawdry surname.
Animal Farm
Look at this oddity from Ananova.
I think this is what the final scene of Animal Farm might have looked like:
I think it might be Squealer as it looks a tiny bit like Molotov.
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