Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: News and politics

  • Tone Deaf

    The main event in British politics is, of course, the "will he, won’t he" stepping down of Tony Blair and the question of who will succeed him.

    It’s a really unedifying spectacle watching the Blair and Brown camps plunging in the knives. Mind you, the key players don’t seem to be emerging with too much dignity either. And I confess I have a lot of sympathy for Rachel’s view that Blair is likely to be brought down in the end by people’s laughter rather than their anger at his misjudgements. Hopefully they’ll get rid of his coterie at the same time, particularly the idiots behind that fatuous memo. An appearance on Blue Peter? Beau Bo D’Or has the perfect comment on that idea…

  • Cloud On The Horizon

    According to this report in The Guardian today, President Ahmadinejad has called for a purge of liberal and secular academics in Iran’s universities. Terrific, just what we need, more evidence that life in Iran is becoming more theocratic than ever. However, according to Professor Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist at Tehran university: "Ahmadinejad is a populist trying to create a charismatic image for himself. These comments are aimed at those who voted for him and perhaps designed to divert attention from Iran’s economic problems. They don’t mean there is an orchestrated plot against more liberal lecturers."
     
    I sincerely hope those don’t turn out to be a case of famous last words.

  • A Wake-Up Call

    Being a simple Britisher, I don’t know who Keith Olbermann is. But I doff my cap to him. This coruscating comment on Donald Rumsfeld and all he stands for is simply stunning. I’m glad to see that some Americans, at least, realise that the current administration is a disaster of the first water.

  • Oh Gawd…

    So Angela met with Ratzinger and she thinks that the EU Constitution should enshrine "Christian values". Oh dear. She is reported as saying that: "We spoke about freedom of religion. We spoke about the role of Europe and I emphasised the need for a constitution and that it should refer to our Christian values."  
     
    Look, Angela, what I’d really like is freedom from religion to be enshrined in the constitution if at all possible. If people want to believe in the sky fairy, then let them do it in the privacy of their own homes and preferably between consenting adults – no corruption of innocent children should be allowed. Just don’t make it part of the state, thank you very much.

  • The Leader Of The Free World

     
    *With acknowledgements to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington.

  • Hysteria At Large

    Armando Iannucci, in today’s Observer, sums up my feelings about the hysteria that is washing over us at the moment. But he says it much better, and funnier, than I could. 

  • Wheels Turn Slowly on the IOM

    Robert, over at his Links and Things blog, draws my attention to the fact that the government (Tynwald) of the land of my birth (the Isle Of Man) have at last equalised the age of consent at 16 for both heterosexuals and homosexuals. They have also at long last repealed section 38 – a nasty little piece of legislation – that was modelled on the UK’s section 28.

  • Oh, Gawd, Not Premature Ejaculation Again…

    So, we have the busting of the terror plot. And while I happily indulge in entertaining conspiracy theories now and then like any average person, I would like to think that this time (unlike, apparently, Forest Gate for example), we have the real deal. A fantastic coup by our hardworking intelligence services, who have fingered potential suicide bombers before they have been able to earn their stripes.
     
    But, we do seem to have the equivalent of a minority report in the offing.
     
    [a British official] suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.
    Second, Craig Murray weighs in with some rather telling points.
     
    When this whole affair does come before the attention of the courts, it would not unduly surprise me if we end up with another example of the Ricin Plot that never was…
     
     

  • Changes

    Last week, a new series started on BBC TV: Time Trumpet. The premise is interviewing people 25 years in the future about events happening now. It is superlatively bizarre (e.g. an old David Beckham talking about the vagina transplant on his arm). But for me, one of the most surreal moments came with a bravura piece of video editing. It cross-cut between Tony Blair and David Cameron talking exactly the same platitudes and then it segued into a rendering of Changes – the song by Bowie from 35 years before today. Go and watch it now.

  • Gorgeous George

    Like Leon, I’m not a fan of George Galloway, but I have to say that he has some skill as an orator. Watch the exchange on Sky News pointed to in Pickled Politics.

  • Country Music Protest Song

    And by way of light relief, here’s Eric Schwartz with a cheerful little ditty aimed at America’s religious right entitled: Keep Your Jesus Off My Penis. Don’t say I didn’t warn you if you click on the link, but it’s very good, albeit somewhat rude if you’re easily offended.

  • The Silly Season Has Begun

    Margot has discovered that the Silly Season has begun in the media. Sometimes I wonder whether it ever went away…

  • Rita Gets Another Award…

    I missed this when it was announced, but the latest issue of the Gay Krant (the Dutch gay magazine) draws my attention to the fact that the Lovely Rita Verdonk was awarded a place of honour in the Hall of Shame by the Human Rights Watch in May.
     
    Rita can now add this citation to the Big Brother award she picked up in January.
     
    Rita Verdonk was summarised well by Job Cohen, the mayor of Amsterdam, who said of Verdonk, “The position of Minister for Integration needs to be filled by someone with a cool head and a warm heart. Unfortunately Rita Verdonk has a hot head and a cold heart and has done nothing but exacerbate the growing divide between immigrants and the rest of the Dutch society.”
     
    (hat tip to Mike Tidmus for the Cohen quote)
     

  • Bread and Circuses

    I’m sorry, but I find this news story particularly depressing. Mbeki denies the impact of AIDS on his country, but he puffs up football? Sometimes I think we are all doomed.

  • All the Ducks in a Row

    Jasper Emmering, over at his Hollandaise blog, has an excellent summary of l’affaire Hirsi Ali. Well worth reading. I’ve never cared much for the attitudes of lovely Rita. I care for them even less now.

  • A Little Local Difficulty

    As you may have gathered, the plug has been pulled on the Dutch government. It’s been quite an exciting few days this week. There was an emergency debate in the Dutch parliament on the evening of June 28th – and it went on through the night until 04:30 on June 29th. The subject was l’affaire Hirsi Ali and did she or didn’t she have Dutch nationality.
     
    The debate was televised live on Dutch TV and I found myself riveted by it. Even though I found it difficult in places to follow, I kept watching until 02:30. The debate contained high drama and low humour. The humour was provided by the minister of finance, Gerrit Zalm, called into the chamber at 01:00 from home. He apologised for the delay in getting there, but, as he explained, he lived in Scheveningen and his chaffeur lived in Voorburg.
     
    The drama was stoked by the minister of immigration, Rita Verdonk. What struck me was that minister Verdonk (Lovely Rita, as I cannot help but ironically call her) was finally hoist by her own petard and as a result brought down the government. She refused to bend or to admit any of her own shortcomings in the debate (nothing new there, then). She had engineered an agreement that Hirsi Ali had to sign in order to get her passport back (Hirsi Ali quite rightly called this a "political deal"). It seemed to me (and to the D66 party who withdrew their support from the government as a result) an abuse of her political power.
     
    It was interesting to watch the debate where members of parliament asked about the facts in the case. Verdonk stonewalled, but prime minister Balkenende let slip (at around 02:15) the fact that a political compromise had been reached, i.e. Verdonk had included an admission of guilt on Hirsi Ali in the statement that Hirsi Ali was put under pressure to sign (in order to get her passport back). The admission of guilt says that Hirsi Ali had “wrong-footed” Verdonk. It became clear that the agreement was not so much a simple piece of legal formality but something designed to absolve Verdonk of any error of judgement.
     
    Once that particular cat was let out of the bag by Balkenende, then a censure motion was put in place by Femke Halsema of the Groenlinks party, and Lousewies van der Laan of the D66 party went in with guns blazing. The upshot was that the three ministers in the government of the D66 party resigned, and hence Balkenende said that the whole cabinet had to follow.
     
    Balkenende has today said that he blames D66 for the fall of his government. It seems to me that they hold the moral high ground in the affair, painful though it has been. If Balkenende really wants to blame someone, then he could do worse than consider Rita Verdonk, whose "lady’s not for turning" persona has been the catalyst of this whole bizarre affair.
     

  • It’ll All End In Tears

    Justin, over at Chicken Yoghurt, observes the unedifying spectacle that is Noo Labour finger-pointing and says "I told you so". Yep, he’s right. To hell with the lot of them.

  • I’m Sorry, What Was That Again?

    “The weight of international leadership is not borne easily,” Rice said, “but we as Americans are more than equal to this challenge, and we must be, for if we imagine a world without American leadership we are led inescapably to this solemn conclusion: If America does not serve great purposes, if we do not rally other nations to fight intolerance and support peace and defend freedom, and to help give all hope who suffer oppression, then our world will drift toward tragedy.”
    The truly terrifying thing is that she probably believes, in the face of all the evidence so amply provided by the current administration, that she is fulfilling this aspiration. But from where I stand, she and her colleagues are part of the problem, not part of the solution…

  • “Diplomacy”

    My dictionary defines the word "diplomacy" thus:
    The art of conductiong negotiations between nations; the art of negotiating with foreign nations; skill in conducting negotiations of any kind; adroitness, tact.
    Funny, that’s what I thought it was; particularly the skill, adroitness and tact bits.
     
    No matter, here comes Colleen Graffy, apparently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, to disabuse me of that quaint notion. She has described the suicide of three detainees at Guantanamo Bay as "a good PR move to draw attention".
     
    One wonders what she might say were she being undiplomatic…

  • I Had A Dream…

    …Only it turned out to be a nightmare. Sebastiaan Gottleib sums up my misgivings precisely.