The McBride Affair and British Political Blogging

For a concise explanation of British political blogs, have a look at Tim Ireland's explanation. You need sound on, and it probably isn't safe for work unless you work at the university where pretty much anything goes. He provides more coverage of this unsavoury affair here.

Poor Mark Steel

I like him, and his politics. But now he's on Radio 4 mispronouncing Merthyr Tydfil and making his opening monologue one about how funny Welsh words are and anti-Englishness. That'll do a lot for national relations - are the Welsh the last people it's OK to mock for their language and accents?

Ah - his liberal instincts have kicked back and he's reminding people of the radical past of the Welsh language and talking to a Welsh-speaker while gently mocking her.

And after his initial (compulsory for metropolitan types?) mockery - he's produced a funny and informative account of radical Merthyr, site of the first raising of the Red Flag: ending with the credits yn cymraeg.

Mighty meaty

6 massive, blue duck-eggs. 2 pheasants. 1 partridge. Rare breed black pudding. Gloucester Old Spot bacon, 2 ham hocks, 1 formerly wild Barbary duck. All dead. Dead Tasty! Tonight the Atkins diet begins. Luckily swimming starts again on Friday.

Can't we all just get along?

I enjoy a good argument, but when commenters start calling each other 'wanker', I can't help thinking that a little more imagination is required. So henceforth, a new rule:

only made-up nouns and adjectives when insulting people

Do, please, carry on with the spats, because it's fun. I will deleted boring swearing though. So you have to make a bit of effort. I know that many of you will find it fun.

Meanwhile, I am sitting in the sun, on the balcony, marking. It feels slightly less like slavery that way. I will resist the temptation to apply made-up words to various students on this blog. Perhaps I'll use said words on the coversheet. Perhaps some of the little Einsteins will even realise that they're actually not real words…

I'm off to the farm to buy parcels of bloody meat later: trotters, rabbit, pheasant mmmmmmm. And some oatcakes for the unenlightened masses outside Stoke and its environs.

Sorry students (and my boss)

I should have been marking essays today, and just couldn't face it. So I ran away to Manchester for a day of culture. First up - the Manchester Art Gallery, which has a stunning pre-Raphaelite collection and a lot of other good paintings too. I was particularly pleased to get an eyeball level view of Ford Madox Brown's Work, a multilayered, slightly satirical work which featured in a very good Victorian literature lecture to which I went recently. I nicked the image from the wonderful Victorian Web

Whilst there, I had coffee with my lawyer, which made me feel very sophisticated. Actually, however, Jo is the long-suffering wife of Cynical Ben (yes, readers, he's taken), for whom I was officially Least Worst Best Man - there were three of us. She also returned my Map Twats flask, which I'd left at their abode on a previous walking trip: a joyful reunion. 

After that, skip a couple of blocks and you get to the John Rylands Library, an incredible mock-Gothic reading room stuffed with the finest collection of texts you'll ever see, from Egyptian papyri to early Gospels to Caxton, a Shakespeare First Folio and first Sonnets, a Gutenberg book and a first edition of Joyce's Ulysses, of which I've now seen three of the 1000 copies printed - the one for sale was €40,000. The core of the collection was the Spencer family's library - Diana's family gave up reading in the 19th century and sold the lot. Seriously though, if you like books, or architecture, or mad Victorian schemes for public improvement, the Rylands is amazing. (Both the Art Gallery and the Library are free, by the way).

Lunch in Chinatown, then home having only purchased two books: E. H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World which is utterly charming and you should all buy a copy, and a comparative book on different poetic forms which you may not appreciate so much. 

We should do the world a favour

…by embracing our own extinction for the sake of the planet. Today's Guardian polls climate change scientists. 85% don't believe we can restrict global warming to 2 degrees - though only 39% believe it's scientifically impossible. It's governments, politics and economics which make it impossible. 2 degrees will make things difficult. The expected 4-5 degrees will cause mass extinctions, human misery, economic disasters and huge political instability. As usual, it's the poor, darker, innocent people who'll suffer first. Sadly for me, I probably won't be dead before it starts impacting on us.

Morning Glory

The dawn chorus started at 5.46 this morning. Thousands of avian voices all singing - yes, I'm afraid so - 'are you looking at my bird?'.

Bookings for weddings and children's parties are coming in unexpectedly slowly.

Forward to the Web Revolution

I'm getting hits from Canada and Algeria from people searching for Damian Mcbride. Hopefully they aren't from politicians wanting to hire him. So anyway, some of my readers are clearly interested in politics but are too shy to comment.

In case any of you missed it, my take on McBride is this: the Tories are utter scum, and there's loads of political ammunition available. What socialists shouldn't do is reach for gossip about people's private lives, especially false allegations. Let's just tell people what the Tories are actually like - arrogant, vicious, self-interested individualists who would serve up granny's mechanically-recovered spinal tissue as burgers to their children if it won them a vote. We all know that the Labour government (as opposed to the party members) are collectively addicted to the meanest, most selfish facets of conservatism, but we needn't decline to the state where we take Guido Fawkes and his ilk as a model of progressive campaigning.

A breath of fresh air

(picture from homepages.nildram.co.uk/.../ picsurroundbidd.htm)
So how are you all? I've been away from my Mac for a couple of days, and mighty liberating it is too. Unfortunately, I've been away from the pool and too close to chocolate.

Alongside my good chum Hannah, I visited Mow Cop, a weird, wonderful gritstone peak with views as far as Wales, Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope, Liverpool and, er, Stoke. Not only is it a natural wonder, it's significant in Methodist history as the centre of the Primitive Methodist connexion - Hugh Bourne and somebody else held open-air pray-a-thons by the folly at the top. They were also called Ranters, presumably by those who remembered the Civil War Ranters sect a hundred and fifty years earlier. The village still has a Wicker Man air, perched precariously on the slopes, a different chapel on every street and fewer genes than families.

But before you dismiss the Primitives (and other Methodists) as just another branch of an odd Eastern religion which got taken up by an empire as a method of holding itself together, remember this: these chapels instilled democracy into the working classes. They elected their own leaders, or rejected leaders altogether. Men, and in the case of the Primitives, women, honed their speaking skills in the Big Seat, learned the power of concerted action, and in many cases went on to found trades unions and lead the Chartist movement. Michael Foot claimed that his brand of socialism owed 'more to Methodism than to Marx'. I think that's a shame, but one can't deny the central role of these churches in forming an independent, democratic, working-class.

Gentler pursuits today - Trentham Gardens, a former mansion house abandoned by the Duke of Sutherland in prewar days when Stoke declined as a fashionable resort, and now revived. Saw monkey, but not otters.

Reading conundrum

I always worry, when going away for a few days, how many books to take. I never get it right. I'm probably here in rural Shropshire for 3-4 days, so I thought 3 biggish books should be enough. Then I went to bed at 12.30 last night thinking I'd read a few pages of Mark Radcliffe's book. 2 hours later I'd finished it. Even though it's randomly unstructured and not particularly profound (Pooterish?), Radcliffe's essential niceness shines through, so it was worth reading. So that leaves two books (Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt and J. G. Farrell's Troubles, unless I rush out to the booksellers tomorrow. Perhaps I shall.

Jolly well done chaps

Stoke City 1 - 1 - Newcastle United. And, for Ben, hearty congratulations to Manchester United for their plucky victory over Sunderland. One more victory and we'll be safe. Above, I reproduce a picture of the Stoke City team celebrating in the traditional fashion after another good match.

1. The Hon. Ricardo Fuller.

2. Mr. James 'Beano' Beattie.

3. His Grace the Duke of Hanley, Ryan Shawcross.

4. Sir Wilkinson Wilkinson

5. Glenn Whelan, Bt.

6. Lord Delap, 'Strongarm'.

7. Sir Matthew Etherington.

8. His Majesty Thomas Sorenson I of Denmark.

9, Mr Liam 'Lawro' Lawrence.

2 other gentlemen temporarily detained by constabulary for post-prandial, sherry-fuelled highjinks.

Country Life

Well I'm at home. I've done the mandatory religious observance to keep the Aged Parents happy, and am sitting in the sun. The thing about being out in the countryside is that it's so noisy - more birds than I can identify screaming to be fed by their parents, squirrels, rabbits, the occasional fox - all accentuated by the absence of my usual auditory input: sirens, gunshots, car stereos, bad music played on mobile phones, people hawking up mucus onto the streets, revving engines.

As it's a holiday, I'll offer some free advice to my media students. If you are going to use the web for 'additional resources', avoid sites like 'megaessays.com', 'freeessays.com' and most of all, '8thgradeessays.com'. 8th grade is US high school for 12 year-olds. My superpower is being able to detect plagiarism in seconds so I will catch you, and it's not worth it. You're all intelligent enough and resourceful enough to find your way to the library and read some university level texts. If you get away with using American high school essays, you might get your degree but you won't have become educated. There's a difference between having a certificate and having acquired the literary and critical skills which make you a unique, skilled reader. If you only care about the certificate, of course, then good luck to you, but I think that's rather depressing.

The wages of spin

Damian McBride, Derek Draper and LabourList (a propagandist mirror of the much more independent conservative.home) are so utterly embarrassing for the left. They're symptomatic of a party hierarchy that's totally lost sight of its purpose and of any strategic aims. Rather than communicate the positive benefits of a Labour government, or the genuinely evil aims of the Tories, they've decided, because they all read Guido Fawkes and the other nasty-minded Tory bloggers, that the voters don't care about ideas. Instead, think these toads, gossip and ad hominem attacks are what matters in politics now. They're so tragically old-fashioned it's sad. They read Fukuyama's The End of History in the 90s and believed the argument that socialism was dead and capitalism had won. Once there's no ideological debate, party politics becomes a matter of marketing, of triangulation and of personalities.

But capitalism is utterly wounded now. The Tories have a clear line on this: taxpayers should save capitalism and the rich, and then everything will be alright. Labour are screwed because it took so much psychological effort to become capitalists that they can't get out of their 90s mindset that anyone with a Blackberry and a second home is automatically morally and politically superior to us all. So the party minions like McBride et al. ape their opposition and waste their time with silly stunts, persuading everybody that there isn't a single politician out there who actually cares about the country rather than himself. Actually, there are - people like Paul Flynn, Norman Baker and Dennis Skinner.

I can quit any time

Got to switch off now - just ordered a biography of Tom Wintringham, a hero of the British left. He's interesting on his own, but I'm really looking for histories of the Common Wealth Party, a 1940s liberal Socialist party which had 5 MPs at one point, including Wintringham. Any know of any?

Shazam! Pow!

I'm not really one for comics. Or even graphic novels, other than Alan Moore and Green Lantern, but I thought Bostin' Heroes deserved maximum respect, simply for being set in the Black Country (not a racist term, foreign readers) and for having a decent sense of humour.

Dammit

Just thinking about buying books makes me buy one. I've just ordered Mudslingers: The Twenty-Five Dirtiest Political Campaigns in History. I'm hoping to learn a lot!

A minor regression

I planned to have a few days off book-purchasing. I almost made it, until I found Cheesman and Williams' Rebels, Pretenders and Impostors in a remainders shop yesterday. I blame the cheese I'd just bought - the author's name subliminally called to me, and I've got a soft spot for the losers, maniacs and delusional characters who set themselves up as monarchs or 'true' heirs to various states. They remind us all that even hereditary monarchies such as Britain are always the product of shenanigans in virtually every generation (abdications, madness, seeking distant palatable heirs, executions etc.).

Perhaps they remind us too that most people aren't democrats: how many of you dreamed as children of being King, Queen or Prince, and how many of you, despite your manifest good qualities, will ever become one? The answer, of course, is to become a republic, in which you or your children can become head of state by persuading your fellow citizens of your merits. Then you'll discover that you have rights as a human being living in a democratic society, not merely gracelessly handed out as a reward for obedience. Off with their heads!

Football - and more important things

Well, it's a big day for football - in serious as well as lighthearted ways. Firstly, Liverpool are playing Blackburn on the nearest day to the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster: poor stadium design coupled with aggressive, thoughtless policing led to the deaths of 94 people. The BBC broadcast a rightfully passionate, pointed program this morning which moved me to tears. It ended with a radio broadcaster (I didn't catch his name) ending his analysis later on that day with 'The gymnasium is today being used as a mortuary. And the sun shines'. That's top quality broadcasting.

The other wonderful part of the show was the section which reminded us why Rupert Murdoch, News International and The Sun are so utterly evil. While others mourned, the paper's front-page stories accused Liverpool fans of urinating on the police and robbing the bodies of the fans - complete lies from start to finish, but great for newspaper sales. It took 20 years to admit that the stories were untrue, and to this day Liverpudlians who support any of the local teams won't buy The Sun. I urge you to join in. It's too late for some of those fans, but the business model continues. Lies, slander and poison are the meat and drink of tabloid journalism, and none are quite so greedy as The Sun and its Sunday version, The News of the World. Liverpudlians are accused of being over-sentimental (they are a mix of Welsh and Irish), but in this case, staying bitter is absolutely the right thing to do. A proper inquiry was never held into Hillsborough and The Sun remains evil.

It reminded me of a period in which football was a matter of huge, mass emotion - sometimes violent, sometimes sentimental. Footage of the Liverpool team of the time reminded me of how much we've missed - so many Liverpool players spoke with Liverpool accents, shared surnames with the victims and some lost neighbours and friends - how many of the current Premiership players live anywhere near the average fan (who is more likely to be a middle-class high-earner anyway)? Hearing John Aldridge describe attending the funerals of fathers and their sons, of two sisters, was heartbreaking. On another level, these men remind me of a vanished (and probably quite unpleasant) time in other ways. Many of them speak the language of the fans, they don't have advisers, agents, lawyers and PR employees polishing every word, weighing every statement, looking out for themselves, or beating people up in nightclubs. These men were fans and from the people. On the other hand, safe stadia require massive amounts of money, and ticket prices are going to do it, so perhaps hugely expensive days out are the price we have to pay for safety.

On a lighter note, Stoke has the chance to strike a blow for honest football and the past today, by beating the arrogant, pseudo-galactico chancers of Newcastle United. If only it were MUFC we were sending down (as we did once in the 1970s), but anyone will do. One more win - or even a couple of draws - will do nicely.

Vaccines = good. Celebrities = gaping cultural void

Mindless celebs who think that being able to wave at photographers qualifies them as doctors, scientists and theologians actually kill people because morons (or ordinary people lost in the echo chamber of postmodern existence) listen to them. Marina Hyde, of whom I'm no fan, makes this point wittily in the Guardian.

Meanwhile, a somewhat angrier American has founded the Jenny McCarthy Bodycount, which logs the number of vaccine-preventable deaths for whom he blames this woman, who went from stripping for Playboy and dating film stars to 'writing' anti-vaccine books seemingly unhindered by shame, self-consciousness, scientific training or any of the other qualities we should admire in human beings.

Turkish delight

This is a video made by Ceylan, who directed the film I saw yesterday. It captures his slow, Proustian way…