"The cost of privatisation will haunt us for years to come"

Excellent piece by Kelvin Hopkins MP in grauniad

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The cost of privatisation will haunt us for years to come: "Beyond the Iraq war, nothing has dismayed Labour supporters more than the government's relentless determination to privatise public services. This is a policy - driven by dogma and the siren voices of the global corporations - for which there is, in reality, no logic. The government's obsession with the private finance initiative - a Tory concept - is irrational and should be abandoned."

It's civil war - sort of official

White House on defensive as US media breaks taboo to declare conflict 'civil war' | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited: "The New York Times and Los Angeles Times have been using the phrase for a while without fanfare, but on Monday NBC News used one of its best-known presenters, Matt Lauer, to declare the network's semantic defiance of the White House. 'After careful consideration, NBC News has decided a change in terminology is warranted, that the situation in Iraq, with armed, militarised factions fighting for their own political agendas, can now be characterised as civil war,' Lauer, the host of the Today show, said.

Bill Keller, the New York Times' executive editor, said: 'It's hard to argue that this war does not fit the generally accepted definition of civil war.'"

Sheridan may be Big Brother's red star

Scotsman.com News - Big Brother TV show - Sheridan may be Big Brother's red star: "TOMMY Sheridan could star in the next series of Celebrity Big Brother.

The Solidarity leader is said to have held talks with Channel 4 to appear in the next series of the show, which starts in January, for a fee of £30,000."

ho ho ho

Housing bubble, toil and trouble

BBC NEWS | Business | Why is it so expensive to buy a house?: "Thanks to successive government policies, hardly any new council houses have been built for the last 20 years.

Some people who might once have rented have been more or less forced to buy instead.

Tony Key, Professor of real estate economics at the Cass Business school in London, said this under supply of housing has led to a huge distortion in the UK property market.

'Somewhere around the mid 1980s we stopped building council houses and we didn't fill in the gap.

'There's been a group of people who might logically be renters who have been forced into being owner occupiers,' said Professor Key."

Blair is mad

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Blair is wildly exaggerating the threat posed by terrorism: "After 1990 many hoped that an age of stable peace might dawn. Rich nations might disarm and combine to help the poor, advancing the cause of global responsibility. Instead two of history's most internationalist states, America and Britain, have returned to the trough of conflict, chasing a chimera of 'world terrorism', and at ludicrous expense. They have brought death and destruction to a part of the globe that posed no strategic threat. Now one of them, Tony Blair, stands in a patch of desert to claim that 'world security in the 21st century' depends on which warlord controls it. Was anything so demented?"

I commented as follows in response to another commenter's question:

That Blair's grip on reality is loose, if not lost, is demonstrated day after day, week after week. Simon Jenkins' article has that nailed.

gulfbridge asks a very pertinent question:

"Why is this lunatic still Prime Minister of Great Britain? Why hasn’t his party applied pressure for the handover to Brown to happen now rather than later?"

The fact is that Blair is actually being forced out of office - exactly by his party.

Has this happened as quickly as it could have happened? No, perhaps not. I, as a Labour party member, certainly wish it had happened sooner. But happening it certainly is.

I am hopeful that the new dispensation will be less crazy than the current one. I'm not a Brown fan either, but I can't see him - or anyone else for that matter - driving on with the peculiar Blair insanity. "

Blair admits Iraq 'a disaster'

horses mouth

Al Jazeera English - Europe

'It has' been 'pretty much of a disaster'

bloody hell

Intervention in Iraq 'pretty much of a disaster' admits Blair, as minister calls it his 'big mistake' | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "Tony Blair conceded last night that western intervention in Iraq had been a disaster. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, the Arabic TV station, the prime minister agreed with the veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost when he suggested that intervention had 'so far been pretty much of a disaster'."

Filling their boots

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The Farepak scandal lays bare a gross inequality:

"If ever there was a moment for Labour ministers to open the debate on gross inequality, Farepak is it. Instead, silence from them all - again."

Polly Toynbee in the Grauniad, worth a read.

Pomo promo

You'll like this... Communications From Elsewhere »

and if you do, you'll maybe even prefer/remember this:

Papers by Alan Sokal on the "Social Text Affair"

Or, to quote myself, "the end of history is foucault to me" (Malky, 1981)