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Archive for August, 2008

In many ways it shows the dreadful state of British Politics generally and the very low esteem in which politicians are held, that it is difficult to decide whether the comments of Chancellor Alistair Darling are part of a Government change in tack or, signs that the wheels really are coming off the Brown wagon.

Right from when he got the job, many have said that Darling had been given a very poisoned chalice indeed plus, how much freedom would he have in the job between meddling by Brown, Balls and Cooper.

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The other week I met up with someone I worked with closely a few years ago and it was good to see him again. Apart from us both being slightly older I suspect neither of us had changed that much but he did touch on something interesting when he said that he had learned that in a life, nothing good or bad lasts forever. I suppose that both my brother and I having been bought up at my Mother’s knee with her reading us Kipling’s “If…”, it would be a view I would naturally agree with:

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;”

But it set me thinking about the very nature of our “expectations”.

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Some time ago along with many others, I signed an “e-petition” a the PMs Office (online), concerning our membership of the EU, last Wednesday we all received a reply which basically amounts to “Fuck Off you peasants, we the Mighty Gordon Brown and the ‘traitor’ David Miliband know better than you…”

Hardly a surprise one may say considering that we have the most politically inept Government of all time which also happens to be intellectually challenged to boot ! True you might say that Tony Blair’s Government was no better on the intellectual front, especially the Prime Minister as the grazed knuckles show but at least Blair made some efforts to do decent ‘presentations’ even if the content was crap.

As we saw from Brown’s speeches in Afghanistan and at the Olympics, Gordon is a moron who lacks any kind of political touch or feel, the Mr Magoo of British politics.

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One of the most amusing questions I have seen lately on a web comments board was asked by an American lady who enquired as to why when reading British Press reports on the Beijing Olympics, athletes in Team GB were referred to as “Scottish, Irish or Welsh” whilst the English were referred to as “British”.

This immediately sparked some fierce debates about, Devolution, Political Correctness, Celtic Whinge, The Cross of St George, National Anthems at Rugby matches, BBC bias, The Barnett Formula and ‘Our Oil’. So nothing new there but then…

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This is perhaps the most interesting “question or problem” that will dominate the next decade of British Politics but perhaps, in order to ‘answer the question’, we need to spend a lot more time in determining exactly what the ‘question’ is that we are trying to resolve.

Most likely, the majority of UK citizens would accept that there should be a publicly funded “safety net” to catch people who through no fault of their own, fall on ‘hard times’, however…

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Irwin Stelzer the American Economist is still a “devoted follower” of Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer although not one suspects from his tone, as Prime Minister.

I would also question his judgement over his assertion in today’s Daily Telegraph that David Miliband is a viable alternative Leader of the Labour Party because I don’t think he is or ever likely to be so. A writer I have little time for is Simon Heffer but I understand that he once likened Miliband to Michael Portillo which is a very accurate comparison indeed.

However Stelzer’s article did prompt me to think about “morality in politics”.

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The situation with the Russian invasion and occupation of Georgia is frankly, a case where there is little the West can do about because the Russians had already calculated that we wouldn’t go to war over it. The West does need to remember Nazi Germany and it’s land grabs and from that understand that Russia is not to be trusted, on anything and treated accordingly in the future, indeed a policy of deliberately ‘frustrating’ them over issues we are not that interested in, should be a low level priority.

However, the oddest thing to come out of all this from a British domestic situation is the “silence of the lambs”, Brown and Miliband.

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There was an article in today’s Telegraph by the American Economist Erwin Stelzer in which he was speculating as to why Obama wasn’t streets ahead of McCain in the opinion polls at this stage.

Some wit hung up on conspiracy theories, wrote in to say that actually Obama was way ahead of McCain but the media were keeping it quiet just to make it look more interesting…hmm, more medication needed there I think. I really can’t see that happening in America, far too many different and conflicting vested interests for that to idea to fly.

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Between the Russians and the Georgians, I suspect that there is little to choose in terms of integrity, neither has any and “truth”, as ever is the first victim of war. The Georgians were insane to act as they did, they must have known that they didn’t have a prayer against the Russians so I suspect that this whole episode is very murky indeed.

It has the feel of a “set-up” in that by some means, the Russian “provoked/encouraged” through some third party, the Georgian assault and let them walk into a carefully prepared trap the purpose of which was to effectively destroy Georgian military capability which they have done before calling a halt to their operations. But then again, as both are total arse holes, perhaps it is just a big mistake… all round.

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In my years in the IT Industry, I have often loaded “unlicensed copies of proprietary software” as have most of my fellow IT workers although frankly, as these are ‘industrial programs’ of little direct use to an end user, it hardly matters. Personally I have always followed a simple code of conduct on software which can be summarised as follows :

If of “personal interest” I have no problem in ‘loading evaluation software’ and deciding if I want to use it. If I decide that it meets my personal needs, I will buy a legitimate copy and the Software Industry has long realised this so that they now do ’supported’ 30 day free trial downloads. However, just where are we going here… ?

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