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Consequences? Who cares?

Sunday, June 22, 2008
For your entertainment, here is a commercial for the Lancia Delta. Unlikely to air in these parts as Lancia abandoned the UK market some years ago as they could not overcome a reputation for producing rust buckets



Those eggheads at Lancia parent Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino need to brush up on their knowledge 0f world affairs and Cult Studs, methinks:

"Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne said he ''didn't know'' if the commercial had political overtones, but that he ''certainly liked it''. Source

My position on Tibet is a matter of record, so am happy enough for Lancia to align itself with Tibet, but a car manufacturer that builds in the 'People's Republic' of China really should have given the issue more than a nano-second's thought.

Too late now, as "Fiat on Friday apologised to China for a television commercial starring United States actor Richard Gere that it acknowledged ''could disturb the sensibility of the Chinese people''. Sensitive flowers, aren't they?

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One thousand very confused Greenlanders

Monday, March 17, 2008
In order to register a political party in Greenland, one need the signatures of 1,000 voters. Quite a hurdle, given that the entire population of the island is 60,000 (My home borough musters a little less than six times that). Note that UKIP was fourth in 2005, with 600,000 votes, and would have had problems getting registered on a Greenlandic 1/60th of the population basis, as would the various nationalists and the parties of the extreme left.

Anyway, Nikoline Ziemer has succeeded in that endeavour and has set up the Sorlaat Partiiat in order to contest local elections next month. She says her party is 'libertarian-socialist'....

Yeah. Right.

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"A tasteless rewriting of history"

Tuesday, January 29, 2008
If I was choosing to be especially euphemistic, that's what I might call this too:

"The distribution in the Netherlands of a free postcard depicting Anne Frank wearing a Palestinian scarf will not be stopped, according to editor-in-chief Pascale Bosboom of Boomerang publishers". Source

Opinions seem to differ as to the precise cultural indicators thrown out by red headscarves (I am pretty sure I read Hamas the other day, but I cannot find the reference ...), but it certainly does not show loyalty to the 'moderates' in Gaza and Judea Samaria. Wiki suggests the PFLP and the rest of the alphabet soup end of PLO leftists, none of which are especially lovable. The EU and the US have designated the PFLP as a terrorist organisation.

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Sigh....

Monday, January 14, 2008
Or petition o' the day:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Change the name of the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" to the "United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland", and to state in legislation that the largest island of the union should be called simply, "Britain".

Seeing this, in expected this to be someone from our very own self-hating left, but no, it is not even from someone with British nationality:

"The fact that you British (I hold Irish citizenship, and I am resident in the area of my country currently under the sovereignty of the Queen of England - it might as well be just England, can't the Scots see they are just living in "Scotshire", a county of England?) proclaim yourselves to be "Great" is something which I and many other people from around the world see as immature and arrogant".

The Queen of 'England'? Nope, of the United Kingdom. The petitioner also does not seem to understand that 'great' is not a synonym for 'marvellous' or 'excellent' or somesuch, but rather indicates size and separates it from Brittany. And do not get me started on a country that lais claim to another country's territory in its constitution up until 1998, and through implication continues to do so through its name.


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What not to wear - Istanbul edition

Wednesday, December 26, 2007
A t-shirt with this on it:

The Turkish Daily News reports on the crackdown in those parts on drug-related t-shirts: "Several stores in the Beyoğlu and Kadıköy districts of Istanbul were raided, with police questioning storeowners whether they kept T-shirts that promoted drugs". Whether this is a law, or police discretion in operation is not entirely clear, nor yet whether sporting a shirt like so will give visiting tourists a chance to have the full Midnight Express experience.

I imagine that most folk wearing t-shirts like so do it mainly to annoy their parents etc, as a sage shopkeeper interviewed notes, "The ban is meaningless since people using or selling drugs never wear any kind of drug symbols in order to remain inconspicuous". Well, exactly.

Sartorial questions to one side, there is a very serious issue here as to the right or otherwise to campaign, one way or another for a change in the law. Would a plain t-shirt with the slogan 'Repeal [insert penal code reference] now', without a cannabis leaf, ecstasy pill etc bring down the wrath of The Man in the same way? And if so, what if the penal code reference was to something else, like - cough - Article 301, which prohibits 'insulting Turkishness', by way of pointing the finger over the Armenian genocides?

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Logic check for Señor Zapatero

Monday, November 26, 2007
From El País: "In a speech before 7,000 Socialist Party members in Madrid, Zapatero accused the opposition Popular Party of doing nothing but “obstructing” progress over the last three and a half years, during which time the Socialists have lacked an absolute majority in Congress".

Doubtless Zapatero felt that Socialist opposition to the PP when it was in power was not 'obstruction', but rather a principled stand. However, it gets sillier:

"I ask for a larger majority in order to recover social and political coexistence in Spain… because this country has great ideological pluralism and growing diversity".

Erm, run that one by me again José - it is bad for the opposition to disagree with you, and you want a larger majority so that they cannot obstruct you, but meanwhile political co-existence and ideological pluralism are just fabulous.....

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Oh for God's sake.....

Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Doubtless readers are aware of the Spanish government's decision to rip open the old wounds of the Franco era, but now a further front is being opened up:

"The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) has launched a campaign calling on the top language authority in Spain to change its definition of Francoism. The rights group said the description in the dictionary published by the Real Academia Española is weak and does not convey the full nature of the regime. The ARMH said that the current definition of Francoism as a movement “with a totalitarian tendency” is to say that power was concentrated in a few hands while ignoring the 40-year violation of human rights, including the killing of 60.000 people, the exile of 500,000 and the imprisonment of another 400,000".

I am not interested in defending Franco or going over the rights and wrongs of the period of the civil war and his rule, but what manner of idiotic world are the ARMH living in that they want to politicise dictionary entries?

Those with more than bar Spanish can play around with the Real Academia Española's online dictionary here. Andthe ARMH's site here, but note that the translation facility it offers does not work...

Doubtless I could add much to my OED definition of Stalinism, "The policies followed by Stalin in the government of the USSR, esp. centralization, totalitarianism and the pursuit of socialism". However, that is factual and does not get into value judgements.

Or indeed, the Real Academia Española definition of Comunismo:

"Doctrina formulada por Karl Marx y Friedrich Engels, teóricos socialistas alemanes del siglo XIX, y desarrollada y realizada por Lenin, revolucionario ruso de principio del siglo XX, y sus continuadores, que interpreta la historia como lucha de clases regida por el materialismo histórico o dialéctico, que conducirá, tras la dictadura del proletariado, a una sociedad sin clases ni propiedad privada de los medios de producción, de la que haya desaparecido el Estado".

Or Leninismo: "Doctrina de Lenin, quien, basándose en el marxismo, promovió y condujo la Revolución soviética".

My Spanish is not exactly extensive, but without resorting to babelfish I can tell that the first is referring to dialectical materialism, class struggle and the withering away of the state. Not much about the gulag, is there? As for Nazi, it gives this: "Perteneciente o relativo al nacionalsocialismo"




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">"And there are no diamonds in the mine"

Friday, October 05, 2007
I had decided that it was high time I stopped writing about the Conference, but those wonderful people at Expedia have tempted me into one last hurrah.

Having changed my plans and gone to Blackpool on Saturday rather than Sunday, I booked a hotel room just for Saturday night via Expedia, and they have just e-mailed me this:


Subject: Book your car and activities in Blackpool



"Dear William (that's what my nearest and dearest call me, rather than Croydonian)



It's always good to find a great travel deal and we're really pleased you decided to book your trip with Expedia.co.uk. But now you've taken care of your accommodation, did you know you can arrange your car hire and holiday activities with us as well?"

Yup, great piece of data mining and subsequent sending of an automated e-mail, folks.



(With thanks to Laughing Len for the headline)


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Democracy - such a difficult concept

Sunday, September 16, 2007
At least it would seem to be to George Papandreou, (very much related) head of Pasok, and holder of degrees from Amherst and the LSE.

Anyway, the Hellenic demos vote today, and it look as though the good guys are going to win, and Pasok does not like that at all:

"No democrat, no progressive person, no Socialist, no leftist can surrender the fate of the country to the Right". (My emphasis)

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Livingstone - body fascist?

Thursday, September 13, 2007

These two fine figures of health, fitness and pulchritude - Len Duvall and Ken Livingstone - have set themselves up as arbiters of what is attractive and what is healthy:


And why are they straying somewhat beyond their respective remits of chairing the Metropolitan Police Authority / the Greater London Labour party, and hobnobbing with extremists being Mayor of London? Because London Fashion Week is nearly upon us.

Duvall thinks "young girls [are] starving themselves to death because of the lead being given by the fashion industry". Care to provide the figures, Len, or are you, as I strongly suspect, making it up as you go along? And not a hint of hyperbole either, I'm sure. Belief in free will is so terribly old fashioned, isn't it?

As to Livingstone, he goes that wee bit further and comments "I would be quite happy to ban under size models throughout the entire fashion world.“ A lot of the women on catwalks look disturbing. The idea that anything about this is attractive is just bizarre". And how do you look to them?

Yes, some models are thin. Then again there are plenty of people in the public eye who are not, and it ill-behoves anyone to make a judgement on what people should or should not find attractive, still less for a politician to attempt to wreck the ability of someone to maker a living based on their appearance. Insert the name of your preferred racial, cultural etc group in the place of 'under size' to get the full impact. Ideals of beauty vary greatly both across the ages and across cultures - I doubt that the average Samoan would find a Somali attractive, or vice versa. Given that the average Briton is bigger now than 20 years ago, I cannot help but think that the impact of 'size zero' models in shaping the popular consciousness has been less than enormous.

Always supposing that one's morphology is entirely in one hands, can we look forward to Duvall & Livingstone coming down like two tons of bricks on body builders, athletes, folk with orange tans, long hair, short hair, tattoos, piercings, thick ankles, split ends, acne or whatever else they consider "bizarre" for others to find attractive?

Cross-posted to Anyone But Ken.

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French politician seeks power - Socialists shocked

Monday, May 21, 2007
Or the Parti Socialiste failing dismally to find its own backside, despite the use of both hands, a barrage of klieg lights and a handy 'How to' guide.

Sarkozy's successful wooing of Kouchner has confused the poor dears terribly: "One can see the manoeuvre : with very little time, just three weeks, before the first round Sarkozy seeks to be unfettered the day after the legislative elections" rued François Holland. "Is it really necessary to crush [all opposition], to dominate, to seize all the ground?". Elsewhere, Julien Dray thinks that Sarko is trying to destabilise the left, and would seem to regard this as less than full adherence to Marquis de Queensberry rules. Source.

Perhaps les rouges think that the gentlemanly thing for the UMP to do is to not contest the election too enthusiastically, and maybe give them a clear run at certain seats, and perhaps a few hints and tips. All that's missing is a chorus of 'It's not fair'.

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Overcrowding legislation

Friday, May 18, 2007
Suppose you have a family, or wish to start one. Who is the best cost avoider, as it were? Seems pretty clear that it is the parents. So, if space in one's house is limited, there would appear to be two options - limit the size of the family, or move somewhere where there is more space. Reasonable?

Not, however, in the opinion of Shelter and various other organisations they have co-opted, including the CRE. They are unhappy with the definition of overcrowding under housing law, which would appear to be this:

"A dwelling may be overcrowded when the number of persons sleeping in the property exceeds the permitted number with regard to the number and floor area of rooms available for sleeping or, where persons over the age of ten who are not living together as husband and wife, must sleep in the same room". Source

Note in particular the second clause and then consider Shelter's comments "With almost one million children now trapped in cramped, squalid conditions". Or the still more hysterical line taken by the woman from the CRE: "For most of us it is hard to imagine being crammed into a bedroom with three, four or even five other people. It's unfathomable that in 2007 almost a million children have to put up with this day in, day out".

I think this is what Bron Waugh called 'pilgering'.

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Globalisation - It's a good thing

Friday, April 27, 2007
At least that is recognised by the population of the planet, as measured by worldpublicopinion.org's poll, which quizzed people in 17 states plus the Palestinian 'authority'. We, alas, were not asked.

It is the Chinese who have best understood this, with 87% thinking it good, and around two-thirds or more of polled Armenians, Israelis, Koreans, Thais and Australians agreeing.

There were an awful lot of apparent 'don't knows' in Mexico, Russia and elsewhere, but the highest percentage thinking globalisation is 'mostly bad' came from our friends on the other side of the Channel - 42%.

The French, in that rather odd way of theirs, saw 38% thinking that trade is bad for consumers. Erm, how? If they do not want to buy Sony TVs, buy Madonna CDs, drink Scotch, drive a Volkswagen, no-one is holding an AK-47 to their heads. Further evidence that France needs to be carpet bombed with Milton Friedman in translation comes from 73% thinking that trade is bad for job creation in France.


Other points to note include 63% of Iranians thinking globalisation good for Iran, and Armenians and Koreans being the least keen on compliance with WTO rulings against their countries.

More later, perhaps.

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A small memory jog for Polly Toynbee

Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Today Public Enemy #1 is having a good old rant about the Manchester Casino (she's agin it):

"The word is that the old Son of the Manse in No 11 always shuddered at this gambling bill (Yeah. Right. He, of course can do no wrong in her book. She described as being like 'a kindly uncle' once. C). His other unexpected tax bombshell in the budget slapped 50% on casino takings and 15% on online gambling: it left the whole policy battered.

But heftier tax is no answer. It may slightly diminish profits and bring a shedload more cash into the Treasury. Isn't that a good thing? No, Australia stands as a warning. Their great expansion of gambling, mainly through "pokies" - high-prize slots - now means more than 10% of government revenues come from gambling. The state has become addicted to the nation's gambling habits. No future government could decide gambling was damaging its people and seek to reduce it. How could they afford to lose those revenues? Better by far to try to hold down gambling as best a government can - and it can.


And now for the fun bit, from 2001: "History will record very little of interest about the John Major era. What stands out? His near- criminal rail privatisation perhaps. Yet he did bequeath one great monument to the nation. No, not one but an ever-growing cornucopia of monuments large and small - the bounty of the national lottery....: back in 1998 when gambling fell under the remit of the Home Office, Jack Straw asked Sir Alan Budd to examine our antiquated gambling laws and suggest reform. There were old-fashioned nannyish restrictions to be removed from casinos (no drinking, must be a club member), some new ones needed (protecting children from one-armed bandits) and urgent review of e-betting, which Gordon Brown quickly remedied".

Perhaps she agrees with Emerson that "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines".

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More idiocy from the T&G

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

What is the purpose of a limited company? To make money for its shareholders. Anything else is at best peripheral to that primary purpose.

So, savour this 'criticism' from the T&G of "US billionaire Nelson Peltz and his affiliates":

"Cadbury's is an iconic British brand and a very successful company which does not need the attention of Mr. Peltz," said Brian Revell, T&G national organiser for food and agriculture. "His intervention in Heinz has been a ruthless pursuit of profit for shareholders." (Source)


Mr Peltz is not one of those scary VC people, but rather the head of a publicly traded company, Triarc, and if a company wants to prevent its stock being traded it should never have had an IPO.

I do not suppose it is worth spelling out that shares in C-S are not all held by cigar smoking, top hat sporting plutocrats, or come to that by hair shirted Quakers, but rather by institutional investors quite probably managing the pension funds of T&G members, inter alia.

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The business of business is business, despite what some might think

Saturday, January 27, 2007
Yet another obscure syndicalist organisation - has anyone ever heard of UNI? - is stamping its tiny foot over the mechanisms of global capitalism, and this time it is private equity with which it has beef: "The philosophy is buy it, strip it and flip it," Mr Jennings [of UNI] said. "It's all about value extraction and not value creation." Gosh, how wicked. I would counter with the words of the Sage of Lichfield: "No man is more innocently employed than in the making of money".

The weapon of choice in combating private equity is the touting of nostrums of 'good corporate governance', which in this case boils down to little more than moaning about 'social responsibility'. Companies have an obligation to their shareholders - c'est tout - and anything that they do beyond that should be a question of choice, not attempted blackmail. However, it gets better: "the rates of return expected by the new private entrepreneurs were incompatible either with good corporate governance or the fight against climate change".

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TUC to Government: targets are bad. And so are contract terms, markets, competition and choice.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
One of the delights of our time is that the TUC and other mastodons can bellow out from the primeval swamp and scarcely anyone pays a blind bit of notice. How very different from the greatly unmissed 1970s and early 1980s.

However, they are still howling in the wilderness, and they have just come up with this "ministers should stop saying that reform is necessary because public services are failing as it damages morale and causes resentment, especially at a time when the Government is trying to keep public sector pay rises below inflation".

And here's the TUC's plan, with my helpful comments in italics:

* reducing top down performance management targets and instead giving services flexibility about how they meet service standards; (Let the public sector do whatever it wants and follow its own agenda, that of serving itself)

* accepting that the public sector ethos cannot be safeguarded by writing terms and conditions into contracts with private suppliers; (So contracts involving the private sector are not upheld in the courts? News to me)

* rejecting the use of market mechanisms and accepting that a plurality of suppliers fragments public services, replacing collaboration and partnership with competition; (When the private sector acts in 'collaboration and partnership' rather than competition it is called a cartel and involves retraint of trade....)

* rethinking the approach to giving users choice in public services, so that users are given the choices that they want to exercise rather than using choice as a quasi-market-mechanism to pit providers against each other; (And how is choice to be exercised if users do not have the opportunity to define it either through the ballot box or voting with their wallets?) and,

* strengthening the capacity of public services to improve by boosting the skills of the workforce and involving staff in change. (Lots of days off for 'training', pay rises across the board, reduced hours, longer holidays, beer, skittles etc etc)

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Greens to Gaullists - How *dare* you spend your own money

Sunday, January 14, 2007
The Greens, or as I suppose I should call them, Les Verts, have got their mung beans in a twist over the cost of the UMP's congress to crown Sarko as a presidential candidate.

Yann Mehrling, for it is he, the surprisingly beardless Green spokesbod reckons to spend €3.5m to "announce the result of an internal show of democracy within the UMP is indecent and unjust". And why is this?: "Indecent in contrast to the stinginess of the government on social questions". His colleague Noël Mamère (who at least has a 'tache) thinks it is "an insult to everyone who lives badly in this country".

Looks like our Green chums are not very good at telling the difference between acts of government and acts by political parties. I do not recall them moaning about the Sego/DSK/Fabius death match, and doubtless the French Greens sat on the grass in Tuilleries for their annual bun fight and the whole process cost not a bean.

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Live in New South Wales? Just passed your driving test? The State government wants you to stay out all night.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Showing the traditional Australian appreciation of having a good time, people falling into that category are not allowed to drive with an under 25 passenger between 11PM and 5AM, which can only be because they want the State’s new qualified drivers to party that much harder. More here.

OK, maybe not, but I prefer my interpretation to the safety first approach. Having created a problem for NSW’s drivers, there are now promises of additional night busses and the like, although I think that over 25s in clubs, bars, etc will be deluged with offers of lifts at chucking out time.

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Ever flown with easyjet? Ming thinks you are stinking rich

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Or my old 'friends' R***air, come to that.


Anyway, the increasingly ridiculous Ming Campbell has attempted to defend his proposed levels of asphyxiating 'green' taxes on flights thus: "The vast majority of people who use so-called cheap flights are people earning quite substantial sums of money - or people with quite substantial pensions". So, all those folk flying abroad for their summer holidays each year earn 'quite substantial sums of money', do they? Whenever I am on a R***Air or easyjet flight, I'm forever bumping into scions of the families Getty, Gates and Rothschild, and the sound of bottles of vintage Krug being cracked open can get wearing, and as for the caviar food fights, don't get me started. I'm sure it is the same story for my UK readers.

And it gets sillier: "The threat of global warming should be included in the national curriculum for every schoolchild, to ensure the issue is better understood". Far more important than the Three Rs, eh?


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