Friday, November 27, 2009

Gary McKinnon and the Special Relationship

So Alan Johnson has shown the callousness and spinelessness we've come to expect from New Labour politicians dealing with the United States of America in the case of Gary McKinnon.

Yet another British citizen is to be boxed up and shipped across to the United States of America using a piece of legislation that was supposed to be used to help target terrorists but is now used semi-regularly to send any British citizen the US of A wants across the Atlantic. McKinnon, whose mental state is precarious at best, now faces gung ho US prosecutors threatening him with ridiculously long sentences in 'super max' prisons for a crime committed by McKinnon in the UK.

The fact that the legislation that allows this 'fast-track' sacrifice of British citizens is so one-sided seems to be irrelevant to British ministers whose fear of upsetting the USA seems to have reached embarrassing proportions. We are supposed to be an independent country not a colony of the USA. The fact that Obama's US is still going through with this exercise, which is simply one of pointless vengeance. They should be hiring McKinnon to show them how to improve their security not threatening him with prison.

When British politicians talk about our 'special relationship' with the US they seem to do so with pride but I think it is time for them to look again. Our relationship with the US does have historical and linguistic links but since World War One when the British government effectively bankrupted itself we have been the weaker partner in this relationship. Now we seem to have developed an embarrassing need to keep the USA happy. We've become like a man desperately trying to attract to get a woman he has liked for a long time to see him as something more than a friend. We do stupid, undignified and humilating things to keep her happy even though we know it isn't helping.

So we sign up to one sided agreements that enable the USA to demand British citizens be handed over to them without question. Let's see what happens when we try and do the reverse. Let's ask for some poor dope from the USA to be 'fast-tracked' and see what happens.

Our relationship with the USA is now so unhealthy that it would make a fine episode of the Jeremy Kyle show. 'I used to love him but now he treats me like dirt'.

So Alan Johnson has given up but that doesn't mean that we should. Write to your MP and to Mr Louis B Susman, the American Ambassador in the United Kingdom. Tell them that Gary McKinnon should be, at worst, tried here and at best be released and that this 'fast-tracking' process brings shame on both the British government and the US government.

Saturday, October 31, 2009

To LOL or not to LOL...

A little less serious blog today. A brief discussion on the use of LOL or ROFL

As everyone in the world knows the problem with communicating by text is that it is easy to misread the tone. What was written as a light-hearted bit of banter can be read as vicious and nasty by the person reading it. Sarcasm and irony are particularly vulnerable to being missed or misunderstood.

So someone came up with various ways for us to indicate our mood or tone. There are smilies and then there are things like LOL and ROFL (for the totally ignorant Laugh Out Loud and Roll on the Floor Laughing).

Now I have less of a problem with the selective use of smilies than I do LOL. Many an arguement has been avoided by the judicious use of ;-) although there is always punctuation problem as following ;-) with any other punctuation always looks a little strange. ;-).

But I digress.

My issue with LOL is that people have started applying it to their own comments. It's become the written equivalent of laughing at your own joke. No, even worse it has become the written equivalent of a telling a joke and then shouting LAUGH immediately. LOL

See! It's just plain stupid.

I don't have a problem with people using it in response to something someone else has said but really if you need to whack a LOL at the end of a sentence the joke can't be that funny.

So please be selective with your use of smilies and LOLs as once upon a time people tried to be careful with their ! useage.

I thank you.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

MPs and Expenses

So some MPs are already getting a bit sniffy about the prospects of being asked to dip less heavily into their taxpayer funded trough.

Sir Christopher Kelly is going to suggest that MPs living within 60 minutes of Westminster receive no second home allowance and that MPs will have to stop employing their family as researchers and secretaries. These perfectly sensible suggestions seem to have upset one or two MPs like Roger Gale, Conservative MP for Thanet and Sir Stuart Bell, Labour MP for somewhere or other.

It is interesting to note that MPs, like investment bankers, don't seem to get it. There is a genuine anger about the gravy train that MPs have been travelling on and when people are losing jobs complaints about having to commute to work, getting home late and not seeing ones family (unless of course you employ them) just won't wash. You can't ask for massive sacrifices from the public sector and keep your little trinkets. You can't say, as George Osbourne did, "We are all in this together" and keep your nice little allowances, pay rises and pension schemes. All political parties are asking us, the tax payers, to suffer for the good of the nation. Well perhaps the MPs shoud listen to their own rhetoric and set an example.

But no. It appears to be 'do as we say, not as we do' when it comes to parliament.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

The Right to Be Wrong

I have always held freedom of speech to be sancrosanct. Just because someone holds views I think are repellent doesn't mean I have the right to censor them. The bad guys censor. We are the good guys. Victory comes by winning the arguement, not by censorship. It is a idealistic view but it is one I have stuck to.

Two things have made me question this belief: Nick Griffin's impending appearance on 'Question Time' and Jan Moir's article in the Daily Mail. I am going to concentrate on Nick Griffin for the purposes of this blog.

I have considered my idealistic belief but not abandoned it. In my view Nick Griffin should be allowed to appear on 'Question Time'.

Why? Well, firstly because gagging him - however unpleasent the potato faced twat might be - allows the BNP to play the free-speech martyrs silenced by a metropolitan establishment conspiracy. Whatever we think of the BNP they are a legal political party. People vote for them.

Secondly bringing the BNP out into the open means they have to face the same kind of questions that the mainstream parties get. They have to make themselves accountable. By keeping the BNP in the half-light we allow them the privalege of escaping that focus. So yes, whilst our media have agendas of their own and sometimes seem more than willing to roll over for the more media savvy they can force issues out into the open.

It would be better if the 'Question Time' panel was not filled with bog-standard party aparatchiks who could have a real go at Griffin. Unfortunately it looks like it is the Jack Straw type, although I'll be interested to see how Griffin responds to Bonnie Greer.

Jack Straw might find going for Griffin tough as both Labour and Conservative have been falling over themselves to show their anti-immigration credentials, which plays into Griffin's hands somewhat as does the Conservative Party's friendship with some nasty right-wing parties in Europe.

But fundamentally I believe we will beat the BNP by arguement rather than pushing them under a stone. Let's face it with the exception of a hardcore support the BNP are doing well because there is a void which they have rushed to fill created by the mainstream parties rushing to hold up the middle-classes. So we have to show them for what they are and to show people that they are not the solution to the problems people are facing.

The left should be asking itself why the BNP can win seats but they can't.

I'm not saying we shouldn't attack the BNP or Jan Moir. They should not be allowed to spout their views unchallenged but we will not win by making them right-wing free speech martyrs. In the new online world we have many ways of tackling them but it should always be on the basis of winning the arguement. Censorship can never be the answer. People will always find somewhere to publish their views.

The key is to hammer their views and win the arguement.

Am I too idealistic?

Friday, October 16, 2009

A Note for Jan Moir and the Daily Mail

I just wanted to explain something to Jan Moir and her colleagues at the Daily Mail about what happened today. They seem to think that the response to the article from Twitter, Facebook and the Blogosphere was a "heavily orchestrated internet campaign". They are wrong.

What happened today was a pretty spontaneous reaction to an unpleasent article, which fundamentally suggested that Stephen Gately died because he was gay. I've read your mea culpa Jan, such as it was, and I don't have the time or anger to point out how much of a piece of self-serving, arse-covering shit it actually is. It's rubbish Jan and you know it. You might not be homophobic but the article you wrote was. Now if you aren't homophobic and you wrote the article just for the cash then you are even more of a heartless individual that I thought you were.

Anyway back to the spontaneous reaction.

It might surprise Lord Dacre* that I don't read the Daily Mail so on a normal day I might have missed Jan's delightful verbal dump but one of the people I follow on Facebook pointed out the article. So I read it.

So disgusted was I that I posted my opinion on Twitter (and in a previous blog here). It was an instantaneous reaction based on pure fury. It wasn't heavily orchestred by anything except my own rage that someone could be so callous.

I also called M&S's press office and suggested that they might want to take a look at the article and decide whether they wanted their company name attached to it as that implied they supported Jan's unpleasent views about gay people.

I then suggested on Twitter that others might do something similar.

In the meantime lots of people were responding in the same way. Twitter allows you to instinctively respond to an issue. It might not always be the best response but it is how you feel in that moment and Jan's article upset a lot of people.

Once the ball is rolling of course Twitter updates and Facebook posts have a momentum of their own. People repeat and pass on ideas. Blogs are recommended. Sites are flagged up where information is kept that people don't want you to read. The process is pretty self-generating. It doesn't need to be orchestrated.

It just happens.

It happened today because a lot of people like me find spite, fear and innuedo unpleasent when it represents itself as truth. It happened earlier in the week with Carter-Ruck. It will happen again.

So Ms Moir and Lord Dacre there was no orchestration, which I know might help salve whatever passes for a conscience down at the Daily Mail. It was a genuine response to your unpleasentness and if you forget that or pretend it was something else then it'll come back and get you again...and again.

Jan Moir

Ah don't we just love the Daily Mail. A newspaper that prints fear and hatred out on a daily basis disguised as news. Now is not the time for a long run through the Daily Mail's history. I'm here to talk about Jan Moir's article today about the death of Stephen Gately.

Basically Jan thinks that Stephen died of gayness. He was a young, fit man and therefore a sudden natural death is impossible. Gay people don't die of natural causes. They die because they are gay. She thinks everyone is 'spinning' to cover up the fact that he died because of his gayness.

Apparently on the night in question he smoked some dope and picked up a young Bulgarian chap for a threesome. These evil gay activities - after all no straight people have threesomes or take drugs - caused his death. Jan fearlessly points this out just in case Stephen's mother might be reading. Forget grieving over the tragically early death of a son due to natural causes. Forget waiting at least until the poor bloke is buried let's hammer some ice-cold nails of hatred into his body now.

She even ties together Stephen's death with the suicide of Kevin McGee. The link between them: gayness. Therefore being gay must be why they died. Nothing to do with depression or drug addiction in McGee's case. Nothing to do with natural causes in Stephen's. They died young because they were gay according to Jan.

Well Jan you incredibly unpleasent bigot and possible an idiot to. Perhaps you don't really believe what you are writing but are doing it for the Daily Mail's cash. Perhaps you are just a heartless bitch but I think you need to learn something: straight people are not immortal. Straight people die every day. Sometimes they die tragically young.

Stephen Gatley's death is sad. A young, healthy man dies young. To blame that death on his gayness is bigotry. I hope all those companies that advertise in the Daily Mail, especially those with banner ads around the article, which last time I looked included BT, L'Oreal and Marks and Spencers, have a long hard think about what they are trying to say by advertising there. Perhaps they all think gayness is a terminal condition to.