Year: 2005

Today is the day when one of the great spectacles of showbiz will be played out in Rome. Amongst all the thousands of broadcast hours and acres of newsprint pouring unctuous praise on the former pontiff are a few quiet voices of reason and balance.

One such belongs to Polly Toynbee, writing in today’s Guardian.

"The Vatican is not a charming Monaco for tourists collecting Ruritanian stamps or gazing at past glories in the Sistine Chapel. It is a modern, potent force for cruelty and hypocrisy. It has weak temporal power, so George Bush can safely pray at the corpse of the man who criticised the Iraq war and capital punishment; it simply didn’t matter as the Pope never made a serious issue of it or ordered the US church to take strong action.

The Vatican’s deeper power is in its personal authority over 1.3 billion worshippers, which is strongest over the poorest, most helpless devotees. With its ban on condoms the church has caused the death of millions of Catholics and others in areas dominated by Catholic missionaries, in Africa and right across the world. In countries where 50% are infected, millions of very young Aids orphans are today’s immediate victims of the curia. Refusing support to all who offer condoms, spreading the lie that the Aids virus passes easily through microscopic holes in condoms – this irresponsibility is beyond all comprehension."

Amen to that.

… and you takes your choice*.

According to Radio Netherlands press review, the Dutch Authorities were "generally pleased" with the results of the disaster exercise held recently.

But according to the BBC, the Dutch are "not prepared for an attack".

I think this is one of those situations that I really would prefer not to be a "glass half-full or glass half-empty" kinda thing… In these situations, I want to feel that "my cup runneth over", thank you very much.  

* Cockney speech recorded in Punch, vol. 10, no. 16, 1846. 

Now that the worst-kept secret in UK politics has finally been revealed, Paul Stamp asks the question: who are you gonna vote for?

Quote

Election

Well we now know when the election is going to be 05/05/05

BBC Election special >> 

So who are you gonna vote for ?

End Quote

Well, if I still had a vote in the UK, it would be for Labour, but through gritted teeth. I, and my parents before me, have always been socialist. However, over the years I have come to dislike and distrust Blair with a passion. While Old Labour, with its deals done in smoke filled rooms, had plenty wrong with it, at least at its best it had solid principles and a belief that there was such a thing as society. Noo Labour, with its emphasis on focus groups and image seems to me to be more show than soul. 

I find the Conservatives’ campaign, with its creepy slogan: "Are you thinking what we’re thinking" simply pandering to people’s prejudices. Michael Howard still has more than "something of the night" about him as far as I’m concerned. I think Andrew Marr got it spot on when he said last night on the BBC that the Conservatives’ campaign had more to do with the message of "vote for us, because that will be one in the eye for Labour" than a message of "here’s all our great policies, and that’s why it makes sense to vote for us". It’s interesting, as Marr pointed out, that the Conservatives have appointed Lynton Crosby as their election mastermind who ran an extremely effective campaign in Australia along precisely the same lines. It puts me in mind of magicians, who are the masters of misdirection ("don’t look at my left hand, concentrate on the right"). People continue to be fooled because they simply can’t keep their eye on the real ball…

Lib-Dems? Nice people, hearts in the right place. I also think that they speak more honestly – about the need to raise taxes where necessary, for example. Perhaps a cynic might claim that they can afford to be honest because deep in their hearts they know that they won’t form the next government. Could they be effective in government? I doubt that we will find out this time either.

Labour has done well with the economy, and that comes down to Brown. It seems to me that Labour has to persuade their voters to swallow their distaste of Blair and look beyond him to the handover to Brown, and ideally that should be to pass on to him the office of prime minister, rather than the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition.

I discovered today that Bill Clinton is also blogging. Naturally, his blog is in a different universe to mine, and all the better for it. Surprisingly, for a politician, he doesn’t seem to pull any punches, take for example this entry on the assassination of Rafiq Hariri.

Update 5th April 2005: I had a feeling it was too good to be true. The blog has vanished, and this entry in the Language Log suggests that it was a fake. First rule of the Internet: No-one knows you’re a dog.