Your help, please

Bryan, I live in North rather than West London so I'm not sure you'll be able to help.  But I'm getting married in just under two weeks and, God willing, will need details in at least nine months time of the classes to which you refer.

(BTW, do read Bryan Appleyward's blog if you haven't seen it before. It's terrific. I love his comparison of Gordon Brown and HAL from 2001.)

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (2)

I win! I win! I win!

In case I'm not clear:

I win!

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

Don't make it up!

I once answered one of those newspaper Q&A things by saying that my ideal PM would be Jeff Stelling,

On reflection, I should have writtten another Jeff: Jeff Randall. I can't recall a word of his with which I have disagreed. Today's column on the BBC's latest bit of bother is typically bang on:

As Fincham walked, the BBC promised "to implement a comprehensive set of actions to address the weaknesses of communications and co-ordination with other divisions." Do what?

Hello, it's not that complicated. This fiasco does not merit another burst of expensive training manuals. There's no need for yet more weasel worded instructions on internal discourse. You simply tell staff: DON'T MAKE IT UP. If you do, you will be slung out. No ifs, no buts and no compensation. That would do the trick, but it's not going to happen.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

Athletics - forget it

Is there anyone now who takes athletics seriously as a sport rather than as a form of human freakery? The forced admission of Marion Jones that she was a drugs cheat is merely the latest in a long line. A newsworthy story would be the conformation of a winner who was entirely clean.

The significance of the Jones story, of course, is that her disqualification will hand the 2000 Olympic title to another cheat, Ekaterini Thanou.

What a farce. The idea that British taxpayers - and especially London council tax payers - are going to have to fork out billions of pounds to stage the Olympics in 2012 is made even worse by the fact that athletics is so central a part of the 'games' (for which read, more accurately, lab experiments).

Cycling was destroyed as a sport - in the eyes of anyone who isn't a cycling fanatic - by drugs. I'd say athletics has passed the same point. The point is, however, that athletics is no longer fit to be bothered with by anyone concerned with true sport.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

Well I never

Just back from a day away, to the big news. Yes, it's humiliating for Brown. Yes, his advisers are clearly not merely inept but a massive liability. Never forget it was his advisers who set the election hare running and then hyped it to the nth degree. Yes, Brown will never again be able to portray himself convincingly as a man on a mission. He now looks like a ditherer - just as he was in 1994.

But he would have been stark staring mad to have called an election after the polling evidence, as I wrote the other day.

Of course it will have implications for the way Brown is perceived and thus for the next election. Is he the big loser, however?

In the medium term, I'd say no. The real loser is Ming. The man is a waste of space and the only reason he remained in place was because the LibDems couldn't remove him so near to an election. Now we know there won't be one until 2009, what possible reason do they have for keeping the useless old fool?

The next election will still be decided on the ishoos.

For what it's worth, my dismissal of David Cameron as a shoddy PR salesman has been tempered. If the Tories really are to offer school vouchers and Wisconsin style welfare reform then I'd unhesitatingly give them my vote.

Sent from Blackberry

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (2)

Succinct

If those who defend mass murderers can ever be funny, this from Oliver Kamm's site is funny:

Ball believes that Mao and Stalin have been unfairly maligned by us bourgeois commentators. He insists: "Like Mao, the negative features of [Stalin's] rule have been greatly exaggerated. The successes have been ignored."

Mr Ball immediately wrote to me under the drearily familiar heading (of which more below) "re: libellous comments concerning myself". He writes, at great length, that he is "absolutely enraged" to read my post:

You are clearly attempting to compare me to the Nazis and to David Irving-the holocaust denier whose work you discuss on your blog. It is perfectly obvious that you are only making these libellous statements against myself because you are aware I am a communist and hence will be reluctant to use capitalist courts to sue. I don't have the luxury that you posess of libelling anyone I happen to disagree with. When I make comments about living figures I have to make damn sure I can back up what I am saying rather than just publishing a pack of lies.

Before you published your libel did it ever occur to you to email me and ask me why I uphold Stalin and Mao and oppose the view they were as bad as the Nazis?

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (1)

Dawkins - the Jews run the world

It's a sign of how deeply entrenched now is the idea that 'the Jews' are the real power behind the media, behind US foreign policy and behind almost everything else that a supposed liberal, and a clearly intelligent man, can come up with this sort of thing and not cause the slightest controversy:

When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolise American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place.

So Dawkins, a liberal hero, believes, er, that Jews control world power. And, judging from the Guardian, it is now a part of mainstream debate to say so. Perhaps you think I am over-reacting, but I am a little bit frightened. 

Chris Dillow manages some elegant reflections on social proof.

All I can manage is Oh My God.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (14)

Who's weak? Who's silly?

There are many reasons in favour of an early election. They have been far too well rehearsed for me to need to outline them. There is one, however, which is simply bonkers. As Daniel Finkelstein writes:

Their main argument, extraordinarily but revealingly, against calling off the whole thing is that it will make them look silly. This itself is silly. The public impact of calling it off has been made vastly worse by their idiotic decision to talk up an election they should have kept secret. But it still isn't that great.

We are told constantly that Gordon Brown will be a bottler if he pulls out now. Wrong. My view of his courage will be enhanced. It means he is able to face down the people around him who are railroading him towards a highly risky and unnecessary decision just to ensure that they don't look/feel bad.

And once he has shown this courage he should buy himself a Christmas present - some new advisers.

He should go into the section of the shop that sells advisers who keep their mouth shut, and don't back him into a corner by talking about their internal decision making process to journalists.

The Tories should, of course, accuse him of being frit. They should go hell for leather at him and portray him as weak and indecisive. But as Daniel writes, the real idiocy would be to call an election when there is absolutely no need, and when - as the polls now indicate - there is is no guarantee of the outcome. It is, after all, no more of a gamble to wait than it is to go now. Indeed, it's more likely a lot less of a gamble.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (1)

Scuola libera e spontaneità, cosė Cameron insegue Mr Control

My latest Il Foglio column, on the Conservative Party conference, is here.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (0)

Back

Apologies for the radio silence; I was laid low with a migraine.

Back to normal now, I hope.

Email to a friend  |   Permalink  |   Comments (1)