The curse of Shrum

Daniel Finkelstein makes some interesting points about Bob Shrum. (I must confess to buying his autobiography last month and then giving up reading it after skimming through it for the Presidential race stuff. The rest is mind-numbing.) 

Here's my take on Bob Shrum, and his relationship with Gordon Brown.

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It's the union, matey

I've just got off the Tube. The announcement which is being tannoyed across the network is that the cessation of service is due to 'Metronet industrial action'.

No, it isn't. The company is in administration but it is functioning properly. What is not functioning is the RMT, which has called this unforgiveable and pointless strike - a strike with no purpose. 

So why doesn't the Tube announcement say what is going on, and call it 'RMT industrial action'?

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The Jews who run US foreign policy, er...don't

So much for the Mearshimer and Walt thesis:

Israel warned us against Iraq invasion, US official says
A senior official at the US State Department has said that political, diplomatic and military officials in Israel warned the United States against invading Iraq even before the American forces entered the country, the Inter Press Service news agency reported over the weekend.
According to the official, Israel tried to convince the Bush administration that the main problem in the region was Iran, not Iraq.

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Clare Short's imagination

You have to hand it to Clare Short; she is, at least, creative. She's managed to find a whole new front on which to attack Israel. The country is, it seems, responsible for the forthcoming end of the human race:

Ms. Short charged the Jewish state with the ultimate crime: Israel "undermines the international community's reaction to global warming." According to Ms. Short, the Middle East conflict distracts the world from the real problem: man-made climate change. If extreme weather will lead to the "end of the human race," as Ms. Short warned it could, add this to the list of the crimes of Israel.

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Pick me, pick me!

What is the question to which the answer is Emile Heskey?

Emile Heskey!

I'm going to the Israel game as part of my stag do. So I have request to make:

Can I play, please Mr McClaren? Since you seem happy to pick lumbering, useless wastes of football space, I'd have thought I've a great claim on a place. 

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Peace in our time

Oh yes,by the way, here's a lttle story tucked away in the foreign pages:

North Korea to scrap nuclear plans

North Korea has agreed to fully disclose and disable its entire nuclear programme by the end of the year, the chief US negotiator said last night — the first time Pyongyang has offered a timeline to end its nuclear ambitions.

Christopher Hill, who has been negotiating with Pyongyang for months over its nuclear programme, said under the deal North Korea would fully disarm in return for aid and security guarantees — most notably the normalisation of ties with the US.

If North Korea is genuine in its pledge to detail and dismantle its nuclear programme, and if it can be fully verified with inspections, it will represent one of the biggest diplomatic breakthroughs of the Bush presidency and have enormous geopolitical repercussions.

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Who said Willy Loman had Down’s syndrome?

I have a piece in today's Times on whether artists' private lives should determine how we regard their work. Here's an extract:

One by one, down they fall on their feet of clay. The latest liberal icon to be revealed in his true colours is Arthur Miller, theatrical voice of the tortured American psyche and “the moralist of a generation”, as The Guardian, speaking for the liberal intelligentsia who so revered Miller, puts it. 

...Miller’s private behaviour may, as Professor Bigsby implies, have added depth and insight to his work, but it is entirely irrelevant to its worth. Yes, we can understand more about a work of art when we understand more about its creator – Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony is given an added dimension when we know that it was written in 1941, is called “The Leningrad” and was intended to mark the suffering of the city in the siege. But as a piece of art, it stands or falls on its own merit.

...The Miller revelation shows how fatuous judging artistic worth on the basis of artists’ behaviour can be. When Miller took his decision, attitudes to Down’s syndrome were different. What does that have to do with Willy Loman?

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