Monday Moan 51

Bring me sunshine

This week sees the long-awaited visit of the Ecuadorean Minister to the UK in order to ‘discuss’ with the British Government what to do with the alleged whistle-blower and sexual offender Julian Assange (See Moan 49).
 

 

Apparently, the Ecuadorean Minister will be asking the British Government to allow Assange to sunbathe and enjoy the warm weather and sunshine because apparently, he hasn't been able to do so for a year.

 

Now I don’t know if this story is true, but I hope it is.  The absurdity of the whole affair would be summarised by a Government Minister travelling 17,000 km to make a serious claim like this.  My mind is now picturing the androgynous and albino-like figure of Assange being given an armed escort to lie on the grass in Green Park in order to get a bit of a tan.

 

But quite why this self-confessed law-breaker should be allowed to see the sun when most of us in the UK are still searching for it ourselves in this most miserable of summers  is beyond me. He and his Ecuadorean minders will have to be quick to spot the day when there is enough sunshine to warrant getting out the sun lotion.

 

 

Scandal in every action

The British press wants to be taken seriously. It wants us all to believe that it is engaged in investigations into matters of real importance – that it is the defender of our freedoms and interests.

 

Really?  Then it will have to do better than its renewed obsession with ‘scandal’ in every action of our politicians. 

 

Following the ‘revelations’ about the House of Commons Energy Committee’s Chairman Tim Yeo, which forced him to step-aside whilst his actions were investigated (see Moan 50), his deputy Sir Robert Smith stepped into the spotlight.  Bad luck for him.

 

In a piece designed to make something out of nothing, he found himself the subject of a typical Daily Mail piece which ‘revealed’ that he held some shares in Shell and had received some hospitality from BP.

 

Throwing into the report words and phrases such as ‘scandal-hit committee’, ‘potential conflicts of interest’ and that staple of nonsense reporting – ‘sleaze’, you might have imagined that this was a damaging revelation of secret information that had been withheld from the public until the Daily Mail stepped in to save us all.

 

But no, the article then acknowledged that all this activity had been fully declared in the register of interests, as required by Parliamentary rules, and that “there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing”. Which begs the question – why write this article in the first place?

 

Get a sense of proportion, please.

 

 

 

Questioning time

I usually avoid watching Question Time these days because it so often simply allows politicians to parade their well-rehearsed views, with no pretence of being open to consider alternative viewpoints or engaging in serious debate.  However, for some reason I failed to move quickly enough to switch channels this week and so caught an extract of the programme from Edinburgh.

 

What a scary programme it was.  The audience contained only 16 and 17-year olds, looking for all the world like a crack team of Sandmen from the film Logan’sRun .  It must be that I am getting old, but they seemed remarkably self-assured, articulate and passionate in whatever they said – unlike many a Question Time audience I have seen in the past.

 

And then we had Angus Robertson, SNP leader in the House of Commons.  I didn’t see the whole programme, so I don’t know if he was carrying the full Scottish chip on his shoulder or just a portion of it, but he was gratifyingly surly and full of the anger and resentment of the caricature downtrodden-Scot in the small section I saw. 

 

 

If the SNP really want independence then they have missed a trick by not campaigning for the whole of the UK to be given a vote on the subject. A few weeks of Angus and those like him would have the rest of the UK voting almost unanimously to cut the tie-line and wave goodbye.

 

 

All in a day's work

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Monday Moan 21

Time to choose

In a few days from now the American people will get the chance to vote for their next President.  Barack Obama or Mitt Romney – from here it doesn’t seem like a difficult decision, does it?  But that’s not the way it is over the other side of the Atlantic.

How could it be that this is such a close election?  Well, let’s not forget that Barack Obama only just managed to squeeze past the aged John McCain last time round, despite his opponent’s complete lack of personality or charisma, despite the economic crisis and despite the anger created by years of apparently pointless and unsuccessful war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Getting the American public to vote for its first black president was a big deal and it was achieved only by a relatively narrow margin.

Obama was then hailed as the man to change everything. Of course he promised a lot, but much of the euphoria surrounding his election was generated by unrealistic expectations on the part of others.  I confess to being swept up in this myself, so much so that I sat glued to the television to watch the inauguration ceremony, because I was convinced it was a historic turning point.  That euphoria and those expectations have weighed like an increasingly heavy millstone around Obama’s neck as the realities of government have exerted their force.  Nobody, not even the President of what many consider to be the most powerful nation on Earth, can change things overnight. 

Obama has, of course, faced some pretty tricky obstacles as he has tried to govern. It seems that a significant proportion of Americans believe he is a marxist, socialist, communist, muslim (delete as you wish) intent on destroying the American way of life. He has faced opposition from the Republicans to almost everything he has tried to do, including a campaign against his introduction of what to most of the rest of the developed world seemed to be pretty obvious proposals for healthcare reform, to extend access to healthcare provisions to the poorer members of society – including the almost 17% of Americans who have no health insurance.  Apparently, this was just an example of his communist beliefs.

He now faces a man who , according to many observers, is not just gaffe-prone, but a serial distorter of the truth (or liar, if you prefer).  Of course, there are those on the other side of the debate who claim that Obama is the liar.  And in the country of free-speech, both sides are able to make their vitriolic and partisan allegations almost unchecked.  Romney a liar?  or Obama a communist? 

 

Oh well, the election will be over soon and then, apart from the arguments, name-calling and righteous opposition to whatever is proposed by the new President, we can take a rest from campaigning - for at least a year to eighteen months.  Then it all kicks off again. 

 

A multimedia icon speaks

Dr. Michael Savage is not Tom Jones in a poor disguise, but a multimedia icon in the conservative movement, heard by 10 million listeners a week on “The Michael Savage Show” and syndicated across the U.S. in more than 300 markets.  At least, that is how he bills himself on his own website (obviously, not the Tom Jones denial bit).

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He is also one of only a handful of people banned from entering the UK.  Banned for his extremist views.  But free to peddle them elsewhere, of course.  He is one of President Obama’s fiercest (or at least one of his loudest) critics.  I am not going to put a link to his website in the Moan – you can look him up if you want to do so.  But I will highlight the following comment attached to one of his many video postings:-

 

“Independents and Republicans are shown to have higher IQs then [sic] democrats and liberals. Just science fact now. That’s why none will vote for Obama. We still have to worry about the other 50% of the country though, you know the ones that aren’t that smart.”

 

Heaven help us all.

 

  

Independence Day

Scotland is to get its vote on independence.  That is, the people living in Scotland will get to vote – which includes the almost 370,000 English people resident there, but not the 750,000 Scots resident in England.

 

Where will it all end?  English nationalism?  Independence for the Isle of Wight?  Not much support for the latter at the moment, as the Isle of Wight Party is not after independence but a fixed link (bridge or tunnel) between the island and the English mainland.  There was a Vectis National Party in the 1970s, which campaigned for independence on the basis that it believed the sale of the Isle of Wight to England in 1293 was unconstitutional.

 

That’s the kind of historical grudge that could grow into a major movement one day.

 

 

Pots and kettles

There is something deliciously amusing about the complaints by Chelsea about alleged comments made by referee Mark Clattenburg during their game against Manchester United yesterday.  These comments are said to include some inappropriate racial language.

 

All this from the club that has supported John Terry throughout the Anton Ferdinand affair and all the allegations about racial insults that were involved. 

 

Pots and kettles.