this weblog is now closed

This weblog is now closed, though the various contributors continue to write elsewhere - so please update your bookmarks with some or all of them.

- Bobbie is still scribbling away at blast!
- Ryan has gone travelling. You can follow his trip across South America at beatniksalad abroad
- Copeland continues to post at tholos of athena
- while Robin remains the giant grizzly

Thanks to all the other contributors - Ralph, Michael and everybody else - who have made the site what it is over the past two years, it's very much appreciated.

PolitX will remain online for archive purposes. Thanks for all your help and comments. Any further email can be directed to me: bob at this is pomo dot org.

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Admission time

I've been considering shutting this weblog down for quite a while. That probably won't come as a huge surprise to regular perusers, who will have noticed an increasing deterioration in posting.

When I started this site a couple of years back, there wasn't much British-based political weblogging going on - and what there was seemed pretty resolutely rightwing or libertarian. I thought about a space where a variety of posters and commenters could thrash out the big issues that the left faces; I talked with friends about what we could try, and about similar projects. In the end, it was intended to be a low-maintainance sounding board for my own political mind, which might be firmly based on strong opinions, but is always open to persuasion.

Despite a couple of years of work, this site has never been particularly popular - but it's never been a problem. It approaches a couple of thousand hits every day, but has never really drawn much commentary from the readers. Fair enough.

The real problem; and one that's been growing in intensity over the past year or so, is that there's an increasing lack of debate between various weblogs. Few people really want to challenge their own point of view, as far as I can see. Nobody really wants to debate any longer, they are just interested in scoring points. Some are condescending, some are defiant, some are just plain boring (this, for example). But nearly all of them just want to argue themselves into positions.

I feel that most of my favourite sites - the ones that have inspired me - have become indicative that we're painting ourselves into boxes. We spend more time talking about the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war than about the things that unite the left. Everybody

Over the past couple of months I've written dozens of posts about various topics, and not even bothered to publish them here. Why? I'm just left with an increasing sense of despondency. I don't write here to vent my spleen, but to try and interact with others; to hear how they feel, what they believe.

Combine a growing apathy with the increasing demands on my time of a new job, and I'm seriously struggling to see any reason for keeping this site going. I can't give it the attention it deserves, and there's no reason for me to try and enter the "big conversation" if everyone's insistent on talking to themselves.

So, for now, I'm going to pull the plug - on my written contributions here, at least. Perhaps other people feel like they can step up and give it a pop; if you've got opinions to offer, you're free to do so. That's what this space is for.

I'll keep going - as I have done for four years or so - at blast!, and when I've got opinions, I'll voice them.

But, for now, this is me calling time.

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Election Doomsday Machine

This article posted July 17, 2004 at tholos of athena

"During the Reagan era Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were key players in a clandestine program designed to set aside the legal lines of succession and immediately install a new "President" in the event that nuclear attack killed the country's leaders. The program helps explain the behavior of the Bush Administration on and after 9/11."

--James Mann, The Armageddon Plan, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2004

Campaign 2004 is underway in the middle of July; and with slightly more than a week till the Democratic Convention opens, the Bush Regime does a little more than is necessary to increase paranoia. The chief distraction is yet another official monologue about cancelling or postponing the November election, in the event of a terrorist attack on US soil. Is this an example of brinkmanship gone wrong? It seems like an off-balance game of Truth or Dare, but one that brings back the icy, Cold War grimace of Dr. Stangelove. It's a macabre American icon; and with its satiric comedy it is somehow much darker than Psycho, or even Apocalypse Now. Einstein said that "God does not play dice with the Universe"; but the Machiavellis in the White House find it none too daring to play dice with the Republic, or cast lots for the Planet.

"The fools!...the stupid fools!...THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE!"

George W. Bush is always the backstory in this Theatre of Good and Evil. Though not widely reported yet, the President has positioned seven carrier groups in the waters near Taiwan, alarming the Chinese enough to publicly commit themselves to a colossal naval build-up, that will encompass ten years of armament work. (Chalmers Johnson LA Times). No idle hands here. And during this hot and nervous summer, Bush's Homeland Security office is expounding on possible al-Qaida attacks on the assembled Democrats in Boston, later this month.

President Bush has named DeForest Soaries to head an Orwellian US Election Assistance Committee, whose paradoxical task is to oversee a cancelling or rescheduling of the November election, if there is a disruptive al-Qaida attack. CNN links to this Newsweek article by Michael Isikoff:

"Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge"..."and other counterterrorism officials concede they have no intel about any specific plots. But the success of March's Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections--as well as intercepted "chatter" among Qaeda operatives--has led analysts to conclude "they must want to interfere with the elections," says one official."..."Ridge's department"..."asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place."

Secretary Ridge underlines the terrorists' "capacity to succeed" and contrasts that with "the mistaken belief that their attacks will have an impact on America's resolve."

It's hard to imagine a process as diffuse as a national election, being administered individually by the states, across a huge geographic area, from tens of thousands of polling places, being put at any risk whatsoever. Since the administration of a national election and the competant tallying of its result are not seriously threatened; it is necessary, therefore, to look at the real motives for setting up an Election Assistance Committee and spreading all this eerie talk of "securing the election".

"The enemy is seeking to impurify our precious bodily fluids."

New York Times opinion writer, David Brooks, who speaks the Administration line on this issue, gives away a clue that motive is important. Here is the gist of it: Spanish voters could not be trusted to do the right thing, three days after the Madrid Bombing. According to Brooks, "it was crazy to go ahead with an election"..."reversing course in the wake of a terrorist attack is inexcusable."

What Brooks fails to mention, is that the Spanish had other compelling reasons for ousting the Aznar government and installing Zapatero's Socialists; not the least of which was the Aznar government's deception, concerning the real perpetrators of the attack. The government was caught in a lie. The government knew that Islamic militants were responsible; but the people were betrayed and told that it was domestic terror, that Basque separatists had done it. From the Spanish point of view, this was one official arrogance too many. It also focused their attention on the fact that this was the same Aznar government that had taken Spain to war in Iraq against the wishes of the majority. The Spanish voted with political maturity, not cowardice; and it is slander to accuse them of being intimidated by the attack.

By the time National Security Advisor, Condi Rice, officially pooh-poohed the "election securing" talk, last Monday, the seeds of uneasiness had already been sown. But this is the typical "bait and switch" psychological war that is waged by the Bush Administration.

DeForest Soaries, the President's hand-picked Committee Man, had sown the wind alright. Soaries said, "Events in Spain, where a terrorist attack shortly before the March election possibly influenced its outcome, show the need for a process to deal with terrorists threatening or interrupting the Nov. 2 presidential election in America." [my emphasis] (Erica Werner--AP)

The Bush Posse seems to fear the impurifying of America's leadership. They don't want another Spain. Certainly it is more than just the turn of a phrase, when Bush calls himself the War President. War represents the most potent hold the President has on the nation's nerve-endings and anxieties. If, on the other hand, an attack were to expose the Achilles' Heel of this Administration; it would be because they have shortchanged Homeland Security, while placing all bets on the Iraq obsession. In the eyes of a dangerously messianic President, the nation's ambitions/interests are melded with a dogma of ideological and religious purity. In this case, however, Purity Of Essence does not equal Peace On Earth.

George W. Bush and his Neocons have so many Cold War skeletons in their closet, it would be best to step back quickly when opening the door. The Armageddon Plan, as explained by James Mann, is the prime example:

"Rumsfeld [CEO of G. D. Searle & Co] and [Congressman] Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff."

"The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001."

Cheney and Rumsfeld were prominent in these exercises as "team leaders". "Once the United States was (or believed itself to be) under nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to three different locations around the United States. Each team would be prepared to assume leadership of the country and would include a Cabinet member who was prepared to become President."

" "One of the awkward questions we faced", one participant in the planning explains, "was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack. It was decided that no, it would be easier to operate without them." For one thing, it was felt that reconvening Congress, and replacing the members who had been killed, would take too long. Moreover, if Congress did reconvene, it might elect a new speaker of the House [and, as per the Succession Act of 1947] [his] claim to the presidency might have greater legitimacy than that of a Secretary of Agriculture or Commerce who had been set up under Reagan's secret program."..."The Administration, however, chose to establish this process without going to Congress for the legislation that would have given it constitutional legitimacy."

Ronald Reagan established the continuity-of-government program with a secret executive order.

"After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet collapse, the rationale for the exercises changed"..."Finally, during the early Clinton years, it was decided that this scenario was farfetched and outdated"...There things stood until September 11, 2001, when Cheney and Rumsfeld suddenly began to act out parts of a script they had rehearsed years before."

Despite official assurances to the contrary, there is something sinister about backdoor approaches, like the U.S Election Assurance Committee, as well as the Administration's "chatter" about al-Qaida attacks on polling places. This static has its origin in the White House. It's a far cry from the truly Apocalyptic Cold War scenario of Superpower on Superpower, to the real world scenario of asymetric warfare with Islamic extremists.

Similarly, it is hoped that an ELECTION DOOMSDAY MACHINE, if it exists, will not be set off by an effort to untrigger it. The White House announces that it is not being cynical or manipulative by suggesting that al-Qaida would like to attack the assembled Democratic leadership, in Boston. "Just playing it safe", they say. It's the erratic, impulsive nature of this Administration that gives Americans pause. Since 9/11 they have behaved as if they had a mandate, rather than assuming office in a contested election. They act with a haughty, winner-take-all righteousness, and are one of the most politically divisive factions in the history of this country.

How great is the leap of imagination, after all?--from a policy of preventative war against nations which might possibly attack us?--to "securing an election" from voters who are possibly influenced by an attack on this nation's soil?

"[Cheney's and Rumsfeld's] participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States." (Mann)

"Mein Fuhrer,...I can walk!"

Sources: digby, john emerson, soccerdad, and billmon

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possessing honours and deserving them

(Sir) John Keegan takes on the thorny issue of the honours system in today's Telegraph.

He argues that there's no reason to tinker with the existing state of affairs, a position that's tenable even if it ignores the fact that honours have power. After a bit of waffle which I thought was going to go somewhere, he ends up taking a rather pointless and condescending pop at Yasmin Alibhai Brown:

If Mrs Alibhai-Brown seeks evidence of the British Empire's ultimate benevolence, let her wonder why she has ended up in this country. Let her wonder also why so many other ex-subjects of the empire have done so as well, and why so many others seek to follow them.

Surely taking down YAB is the rightwing columnists' equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel?

Anyway, I digress. Unfortunately, Keegan also points to the French Legion of Honour as a great example of a good honours system. There's nothing wrong with his choice, of course - except that it only makes you realise how inadequate and corrputed the British equivalent really is. The French have removed from their honours the link with politics, religion and feudalism: for the British, honours are all about becoming a Lord (with the political power that affords), taking on the baggage of the state religion or exerting your dominion over someone else.

Questions of empire bother me little, but I can see why they might grate for some. I have no problem with an honours system that is fair, secular enough to be relevant to all and resistant to manipulation by party politics. But that's not what we've got at the moment.

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Give them enough rope...

Respect bigwig Lindsey German gets a chance to explain her close association with Muslim fundamentalists and fails miserably.

Charges of anti-semitism, support for terrorism, homophobia and sexism abound, as in the attacks on Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the Muslim Association of Britain in recent days. Those of us who have long supported women's and gay liberation have now picked up some unlikely supporters. Papers like the Sun, itself no stranger to sexist and homophobic rants, have developed a belated concern for the rights of Muslim women and gays.

In her attempt to explain why her anti-war left and religious extremists make strange bedfellows, she seems to pour disdain on the concept that she might share common interests with other groups (Muslim fundamentalists, you know, suffer from racism - Tories, they're just bleuch).

When there's an attempt to justify her actions - and she rarely tries - it's flimsy at best.

Those who argue that... al-Qaradawi's views on gays are worse than the BNP's, are dangerously wide of the mark.

So it's alright as long as they're only as bad as the BNP, then?

There's more than enough material in there to show why I find Respect, German and the strange tendency to believe that your enemy's enemy is your friend (I didn't believe it about Pinochet, I certainly don't believe it about bin Laden, al-Qaradawi, Abu Hamza etc) so distasteful.

But enough of me getting riled - Harry does it so much better.

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Al-Qaradawi speaks

These days the phrase "controversial Muslim cleric" rolls off the tongue easier than, erm, an extremely rolly thing.

We've all heard the bad stuff about Sheikh al-Karadawi, the Muslim dude who's come to Britain to spread his message of wife-beating, gay-bashing, infidel-killing and suicide-bombing.

But, until tonight, I haven't actually heard anything from Ken Livingstone's latest mate.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, tonight he's on Channel 4 News.

Says Jon Snow:

Michael Howard, the Tory leader, has demanded the Sheik's deportation. What's got the Tories rattling over his role? You may well ask, particularly as the cleric came here five times whilst Howard was Home Secretary and 17 times whilst the Tories were in power.

I ask him about homosexuality, wife-beating and how Britain has changed with regard to muslims since 9/11. In this exclusive interview, he also spells out his teachings on suicide bombings.

Actually, I'm unlikely to hear that either, what with working and everything. But tune in to see what this CMC has to say for himself.

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Political definitions

Currently waiting for a friend to turn up, so I'm having a quick brainstorm about some various political definitions. Add your own in the comments; I'll write some more later on.

Republican: Someone who wants to have a lot of money

Democrat: Someone who wants to have a lot of money but pretends they don't

Libertarian: Someone who thinks everybody is lying to them, unless that person happens to be heavily armed

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Sport and sexism

Beverly Turner, the former ITV F1 correspondent gets the full back page treatment in today's Independent with what seems to be a basic precis of her upcoming book (and follows an interview in the Observer last month).

During my three seasons as an F1 TV reporter, I witnessed the world of elite motor racing defining itself as "cutting edge", but promoting ideologies from the Dark Ages.

The driver Eddie Irvine turned his charms on me at the Brazilian Grand Prix when the conversation turned to a mutual friend, a German F1 presenter whose contract had been unexpectedly cancelled.

"Oh that's a shame," he said from behind mirrored sunglasses. "It was good watching her arse walk down the paddock."

I assumed he was being sarcastic. "Hmm..." I said. "I'll miss her conversation too."

"No, I won't miss that," he said, quite seriously. "She just looked good - she was just here to be looked at. That's all any of you are here for, just to be looked at."

I've no time for formula one - this giant version of Scalextric leaves me cold - and Turner's article, for all its shock horror value, doesn't really say anything that we don't already know. You don't have to spend three years inside the sport to realise it's dominated by boys and their toys.

And there's nothing boys like better than a bit of tits and arse.

After this damning indictment, Turner bizarrely seems to assume this kind of behaviour is uncommon in sport (and in life):

F1 stands alone in its use of women to promote the sport. No dedicated website is complete without an invitation to vote for your favourite "Pit Babe". Of course, some American sports still have cheerleaders, but at least these girls actually do something. F1 sits its models on car bonnets and drapes them over drivers.

Thank goodness, eh, for cheerleaders "doing something" (jiggling their bits)... otherwise they'd be eye candy - just like they are in every other promotional event, motor show, television gameshow, advertising campaign, magazine cover etc.

Formula one might be the zenith of sexism, but we're not as far away from the dancing girls of Italian television as we think.

Aside from the issues of sexism, it was interesting to read Turner's analysis of why modern formula should - but won't ever - get a female driver.

'It's astonishing, really,' says Turner. 'F1 is all about capitalism, generating publicity and bringing in sponsors. The obvious headline grabber would be a [properly promoted] female driver. The team brave enough to bring one in would be guaranteed front page coverage around the world. But none of them are prepared to do it. In F1, sexism even beats the forces of capitalism, so that gives you an idea of how sexist it really is.'

Over the past few years I've read countless profiles of women (this one of Brazilian driver Bia, for example) who want to break into the sport, and have track records to prove their worth - but can't.

Is it sheer machismo that keeps the good girls down?

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Moore Wins Hearts, Minds, And Votes

Cross-posted at tholos of athena

Nothing yet presented to the American people succeeds, as Fahrenheit 9/11 does, in showing the sociopathic disconnect between President Bush and his actions and their consequences. The audience reaction to this Michael Moore film reveals a hunger for this information; and people are touched in a way that great theatre, cinema, or poetry can sometimes touch them. Gasping, weeping, laughing, and crying out in amazement, they are swept by a range of emotions, transported from sight-gags and absurdist comedy to tragedy and loss.

Young people in Flint, Michigan compare the televised devastation of Iraq to parts of their economically gutted and ravaged Flint. Well-to-do Congressmen, cornered by Moore on the steps of the Capitol, don't risk receiving their dead from Iraq. George W. Bush, erratic and sometimes ridiculous, flits merrily along, unconcerned about black high school drop-outs in Flint, Michigan, or white kids in Appalachia who have nowhere else to go but the Army. President Bush openly woos "the haves and have-mores" and the Patriot Act sails through the House without so much as being read.

Moore's film stands head and shoulders above any of his previous work, because its power rests on profound recognitions. In this film we see a culture of death, the juxtaposition of destroyed bodies, Iraqi and American. We see the imposture of "the consent of the governed". Election Fraud 2000 and an American coup d'etat are revisited, including the spectacle of black disenfranchisement in Florida projected into the House of Representatives, a sad betrayal of democracy.

Other powerful themes seem to visibly rock the audience. Certainly, for many of the uninitiated, it is the sense that they have been robbed of a chunk of history, that is just now being returned to them. This replacement into consciousness of a crucial piece of history and narrative is cathartic.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, "The persuasiveness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable; it prevails even over a resisting heart". At 2 screenings of Moore's film I've heard people break down and sob. There were incredible gasps from the audience; there was a hush of attention with which people of all ages seemed to attend to Fahrenheit 9/11 and breathe it in.

"This is an impressive crowd - the haves and have mores. Some people call you the elite - I call you my base." --George W. Bush

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Sheepish

Norm speaks, the world listens.

Or, more accurately, Norm picks up a clearly intended meme from some arty farty American, and some weblogs carry on his good work. No offence intended to the man Geras, of course, but you can't help feeling that this is just another one of those "let's answer 100 questions" things that fills a bit of space and doesn't tell you much.

So, in that frame of mind, I'm quite happy to act the hypocrite and fill up some empty space with my responses to an inane "daddy or chips" questionnaire.

(This will be the last of my misanthropic posts. I blame tiredness)

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? any man who dances without being on drugs scares me.
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? Gatsby. Them green lights do it for me.
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? Ellington. I've never listened consciously to Basie.
4. Cats or dogs? Cats are like furry puke. Dogs 4eva.
5. Matisse or Picasso? Picasso made pretty people ugly, then we made them pretty again.
6. Yeats or Eliot? Two buffoons obsessed with their own importance. I can't work out why I love them both so much...
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Chaplin. He looked funnier.
8. Flannery O'Connor or John Updike? Oh, really? Whatever, Updike.
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? Casablanca, but it's close.
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning? You know, I really don't like visual art.

To spare your pain, you'll have to click on the link to continue.

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Public intellectuals part III

Prospect. Fucking Prospect. How do you feel when a magazine called Prospect flops on your doormat? Do you feel overcome by a tingle of moderate progressivism? What’s that like, exactly? Is it like mice gently nibbling your scrotum? Or is it like the gentle squeak of bats being popped in a microwave? Later, does one need the aid of a single glass of excellent Mer-lot to recover? Or does one go outside to Appreciate the Design Community, wherever it may lurk?

Jamie certainly has my vote.

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Different questions should be asked

I've admitted it before - I often get bored of weblogs. The incessant posturing, proselytising nature of these internet soap boxes really doesn't add. Of course, I can't really ride any kind of high horse, since I've been bashing away at this site for nigh on four years, and I'm usually as bad as any other.

Then again, sometimes the sheer frustration of reading complete twaddle combines with an adrenalin zip and suddenly I find myself wanting to offer an opinion - or just vent a little.

All this is a preamble to me explaining how today I went on a little trip that reminded me of some of the reasons I started writing this little political weblog in the first place. I can't say it really galvanised my liberal loins into any kind of real action, but I thought I'd get it off my chest while I had a few spare moments.

Perusing ConCom (since I, like others, find it horribly compelling), I saw that Peter Cuthbertson had taken time out from his vigorous attempts to get himself a post-university job as a career politician (those personality-devoid individuals about whom we hear so much from the bah humbuggers and traditionalists) to have a bit of a moan about the Life of Brian and then, by extension, take out his walloping stick against his favourite straw man - liberalism.

the future most liberals dream of... where faith is a private eccentricity and a common morality non-existent, where the 'freedom' simply means an absence of moral and legal obstacles to the pursuit of sensual gratification by sex and drugs, and where all of life is ultimately a return to the freedom of infancy, with all personal responsibility transferred to the state

You know, I always wondered why I'd considered my personal valhalla to be a place where I could shove heroin up my arms and molest children all day long because the Boss told me to. Now I know - and it's quite clear that wanting socially liberal legislation is leading me directly to a cesspit/hellhole/moral vacuum. Do Not Collect £200, Do Not Pass Go.

But then I thought: "Cuthie's Cuthie", and I wouldn't expect him to say any less. It's the way he is, innit - after all, he does call Little Green Footballs a "great weblog". Little Cuthie was in short trousers when I was, well in short trousers too (I'm only 25 after all) - but he grew up as a rebel in't industrial north while I'm throwing off the shackles of a rural, southern, Tory upbringing. We're both sticking two fingers up to the world in our own sad little way, and for that I can empathise with him - even if I can't imagine having a shrine to anybody - let alone MaggieThatcher, peace be upon her.

Then I started reading the comments to his posts.

Some of these Tory commenters are basically nice chaps, as bigots go - you know, the kind who doesn't get angry enough to get in real trouble, and probably wouldn't stab you in the eyes when you sat next to him on the bus.

But then I come across possibly the most odious poster I've ever come across on a British weblog.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present for your ire one WJ Phillips.

Here's a selection of his quotes over the last few weeks:

Only fair that the Frogs should damp down discussion of Mahommedanism, 20 years after their legal system began to harass anybody who took too objective a view of Holocaustianity. Got to shelter *all* semitic cults from scrutiny-- mustn't discriminate.

I can only wonder what "too objective a view of Holocaustianity" might be.

Most agitation for queer "marriage" comes not from people who engage in homosexual behaviour but homosexualists... Their neurotic, immature psychology (male homosexual behaviour is an infantile disorder of sexuality, possibly caused by hormonal imbalance in utero) interprets anything less as an insult.

A remarkable scientist, this Phillips. To this, he adds:

Too much breath is wasted on queers. They're only 1-2% of the adult population, and their self-appointed spokesmen are narcissists who like being gossipped about. Illegitimacy is a much more serious social dissolvent than a little band of Peter Pans who never grew up sexually.

I could go on and on. Well I couldn't, since Peter's comments don't seem to be working. But there are myriad examples of this rather well-formed debating technique from WJ, I've been reading them for a long time.

Is he for real, I asked myself - or is he simply a dreamt-up bogeyman for my tiny little liberal mind to worry about in between bouts of sexual molestation, crack smoking and destroying little children's lives?

So often the right call for others to denounce. "Tell us you hate Islamic Fundamentalists!" they shout, "Because if you don't, we'll assume you're on their side!"; "Condemn acts which everyone has already agreed are horrific and barbaric - because otherwise you're complicit in the murder of thousands!"; so often the Left is drawn to a war of words, because, after all, the ball lands in our court and we have to answer.

But I think it's time that different questions were asked. Perhaps its just me and my failing memory (I'm not as young as I used to be), but all the time I've been watching Phillips spew out his putrid slime across Peter's site, I've not once seen Cuthie give him short shrift. So now I ask: is this wanton display of anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic, anti-homosexual, offensive, nationalist, racist, bigoted, ill-informed idiocy the kind of thing All Good Conservatives should be for - or against?

Or is it that these people - these despicable, blind, angry people - form an important sector of the Tory vote - and goodness me, although we make an awful lot of moral judgments about the proclivities and desires of people we can't understand, we wouldn't want to offend this kind of person by telling they're bad, would we?

Answers on a postcard, please. Vent over.

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Dame Porter Cackles All The Way To The Bank

So, Dame Shirley Porter put £12 million quid into Westminster Councils Bank account on July 1st did she. Well done, Shirl. But hold on, I thought the courts and auditors had made judgement that the old witch owed £42 million? Ah, they did. Fortunately for Shagrag Shirls though it seems ‘she’ and Westminster Council have come to some sort of “agreement” whereby they’ve let her off £30 million nicker so long as she’d let them have £12m. My, wot a lucky old girlie Shirley is then. I can’t help wondering if Council Tax Payers in the fair Borough of Westminster were consulted by their Council about this super-licky-monster rebate let-off for DSP before they cut their little deal with the harridan? Bet your sweet arse they weren’t.

However, were I one of the good burghers of Westminster, I would now be very actively forming groups whose aim was to use the DSP Negotiating Framework (must be Legal otherwise they couldn’t have engineered this carve-up with her, could they..) to ensure that whichever Council Tax Band Grouping folk belonged to, they too, in future, would only ever pay 28.5% of all their annual Council Tax billings.

It would be great fun this afternoon to be present in Westminster Magistrates Court to listen to the cases being brought (as they are almost daily in every Borough/District of London) specifically by Westminster Council against those who have either CT arrears from year 2003/04, or who have not yet made any payment for the current year 2004/05 and have therefore been arraigned to appear before said Magistrates. Were I one of those up before Their Magisterialnesses, I would certainly be demanding my Right to “negotiate” a much fairer amount than that imposed upon me by the Council for my 04/05 Banding. And I would positively demand that “agreement” was reached at a figure not exceeding 28.5% of the sum originally set. After all, how could they refuse after the way they’ve accommodated Dame Shitley?

One query. If I were to tell the Magistrates that I couldn’t pay my CT bill because I only had thruppence halfpenny to my name, and they then discovered that, actually, I had several hundred pounds, would there be a ‘legal’ term for telling a porkie-pie to the court? Or would that be Okay? Because old Dame Porter actually told a Higher Court than a Magistrates Court, that she only had around £300,000 sterling to her name. But as we know, she had Millions and Millions more. Is there any ‘legal’ term for her particular porkie-pie? Would it be an Offence of any kind in fact? Or is that Specially Okay because the wizened-up crackle-faced evil cash-sewer is as rich as Croesus and knows that one law applies to her and another set of laws apply to the Un-rich in the UK? Answers please on a postage stamp – after you’ve “negotiated” a price other than the face value of the stamp with the Post Office of course.

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Bias and the BBC

It's nearly six months since the Hutton report into the death of David Kelly - and, therefore, nearly six months since the huge debacle that followed at the BBC. In the meantime the corporation has gone and got itself a new chairman, a new director general and a whole bunch of new headaches. The corporation is up for renewal of its royal charter, its been told to cut back its online operations and its Middle East coverage - always controversial - is coming under increasing pressure.

Now columnist Mahmoun Fandy writes in the Washington Post that the BBC and other media are helping exacerbate a dangerous situation in the Middle East. He attacks, in particular, regular BBC panellist Abdul Bari Atwan, the editor in chief of what Fandy calls the "pro-bin Laden newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi".

If Arab moderates were to become prominent in the West, they would certainly become prominent at home. Instead, the BBC has been treating us to Atwan -- bin Laden's mouthpiece and the main cheerleader of suicide bombers on al-Jazeera -- as its main commentator on Arab affairs.

But the Western media's problems are writ large with the Islamist "tabloidisation" of the Arab press, he says.

[Abdul Rahman Rashed, the head of al-Arabiya TV] blames both contemporary Arab culture and the culture of Arab newsrooms... He told me that last year, when he was still chief editor of the pan-Arab daily newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, he caught one of his editors changing the caption of an AP photo from "an American soldier chatting with an Iraqi girl" to "an American soldier asking an Iraqi girl for sex." "If I had not caught him, it would have gone to print this way," he said.

While the arguments continue and blame is still being left on the BBC's doorstep, an interview with BBC News boss Richard Sambrook - possibly the man who should have taken most responsibility for the Gilligan affair - suggests that some lessons, perhaps, have been learned. The corporation has started to look more closely at its reporting, and what it should be doing.

"It's not lessons deriving from the specific issues raised by Hutton, it's wider than that. Quite a lot of the Neil report is standing back, saying: these are our values, this is what we strive for. As far as I know, in the 25 years I've been here, the BBC has never articulated them in this way."

Yet it is hard to believe that such a seismic shift would have happened without Hutton. And this week, the BBC will announce the final piece in the post-Hutton jigsaw, the new, improved complaints system. As widely anticipated, there will be an ombudsman - although the BBC is curiously shying away from using that term - and a significant presence on the BBC website where all corrections and clarifications will be published.

Sambrook reveals that BBC News will have its own section of that website, where all mistakes and misinterpretations across all BBC news outlets - television, radio and online - will be put right.

A swift, public corrections procedure is long overdue, and could go some way to helping fix some things that are wrong with the news culture at the BBC. But it cannot go all the way.

As I've said countless times before, I am a great fan of the BBC and believe it has a real and tangible place in the world that should be protected. But it should be open, it should be clean. We are still in a position where the corporation, backed into a corner, comes out fighting and fails to examine the root causes of its journalistic failings. There's been self-analysis, of course. But clearly there are things which still need to be addressed: the power the BBC has in foreign nations, the role it sometimes appears to take as a political agitator, the seemingly endemic "loose language" on the news website. Big decisions still need to be made - and Sambrook, who looks to be increasingly sidelined after his role in Hutton, has not made them.

Maybe somebody else can.

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What are you rebelling against?

The web is full of tributes to Marlon Brando, who bowed out on Thursday after - perhaps surprisingly - making it all the way to 80 years old.

The obituaries and eulogies have been stuffed full of accolades such as "the greatest movie actor of all time", and while they might be stretching credulity there's no argument that Brando's finest performances were some of film culture's most defining.

Some have recognised that his failures were almost as defining as his successes - and the reclusive nature of his later years gave his story mystery and a strange, eerie sort of pathos.

That fragile legend - built on a heavy, brooding screen presence - was both buoyed and dogged by his sometimes disastrous personal choices. When Brando made the Time 100, writer Richard Schickel made the observation that:

No figure of his influence has so precariously balanced a handful of unforgettable achievements against a brimming barrelful of embarrassments.

Most of the tributes in the past few days have gushed and waxed lyrical about his successes - Streetcar, On the Waterfront, the Godfather. But, writes David Thomson in the Guardian's lengthy and undaunted obituary,
despite the artistic poverty of his later years, even when weighed against his failures each glimpse of genius was enough to find him a place in the cultural canon.

But we will have The Men, Zapata, On The Waterfront, The Fugitive Kind, The Chase, The Godfather, Last Tango ... it is enough, I suspect, for him to become as representative of cinema as Garbo, Chaplin and Mickey Mouse. And as the travail and melodrama of the awkward life passes, so we can look at the movies and recall that we were young, once, when Marlon Brando was doing such things.

It was often veiled, supercilious and sinister, but on screen he made us an offer we couldn't refuse.

Certainly, few screen stars have proved so magnetic and yet so elusive. He was James Dean before James Dean; he was both complicated and straight forward; he made us feel sympathy for characters that should have been unlovable. And, of course, he nurtured a generation of method actors.

My girlfriend told me a story about Dustin Hoffman - one of Brando's inheritors - who took his Stanislavsky routine to the extreme during the filming of Marathon Man.

Laurence Olivier offered him a word of advice: "You should try acting, my boy," he said. "It's much easier."

Olivier was right of course. Method actors never do things the easy way. Brando himself said:

"Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life…. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis"

The irony that he used the success of his neurotic impulses to try and rid himself of those selfsame neuroses says a lot. And it never worked; the circle was impossible to break out of. And perhaps that's what Brando - who couldn't have managed to make his own life more difficult - gave us.

He was - like his performances - complex, modern and sometimes pointless. But he was a star.

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