Merry Christmas to John McDonnell MP, my person of the year

John McDonnell MP: Another World Is Possible: "It shouldnt be like this after 10 years of a Labour Government. In 2008 we can no longer remain quiet about New Labours grotesque failure of the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. The role of the Left will be to expose more fiercely and campaign even harder against the injustices of our society."

Good on you John, if there was a couple of hunder more like you in the Commons and a couple of dozen in the Scottish Parliament we (Labour) would not be in the shit we are in.

Best from Malky
x

If only the Labour leadership had political and press advisors like this...

The Herald : Features: COMMENT: "Brian Taylor, BBC Scotland's political editor, didn't mince his words. 'Wendy Alexander has broken the law,' he announced on the Politics Show yesterday as Alexander's no-show continued. No-one was around to contradict him. Not only was the Scottish Labour leader hiding from the media, so was everyone of any significance in the party."

The rest of the article is well worth a read...

Union or corporate

Tories complain over continued union links | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "But the Tories, who have been trying for 100 years to introduce a requirement that union members sign an annual 'tick box' to contribute, used Labour's reluctance to accept reforms as their reason to quit the Phillips talks in October."

Can Wendy survive?

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Alexander to continue as leader: "
Wendy Alexander intends to carry on as Scottish Labour leader, despite continued pressure for her to quit over a donation to her leadership campaign."

We are the undead

The Herald : Features: Saturday Essay - Ian Bell: "The existence of an actual, living Labour Party might have helped the pair, but that entity has been reformed out of existence, generally with the enthusiastic support of the Prime Minister and Donald Dewar's latest successor. "

The state of arcania

Scotland awakes | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "When I mention the argument over independence, Cosgrove affects a happy kind of indifference, once again suggesting something that my time in Scotland has brought up time and again. When it comes to the country's current collective mindset, focusing on frenetic debates about secession from the union, shrill voices in the Edinburgh parliament and the endless tussling between the SNP and Labour perhaps misses a crucial point: that if independence is at least partly a state of mind, a large number of Scots have got there already. 'A lot of that debate feels so arcane,' he says. 'The truth of the matter is, apart from some key institutions, maybe it's already happened. That's the thing: Scotland already is independent, isn't it?'"

When the alternative is impossible, what’s left?

The Herald : Features: Ian Bell: "All governments fail and all governments behave badly, sooner or later. New Labour's problems are deeper and, in the horrible word, institutional. They have less to do with moral and intellectual exhaustion after a decade in office than with ideology's answer to original sin. Nothing complicated: as it turned out, they didn't believe in anything much. It shows.

The "project" as devised by Blair, Brown, Mandelson and those who went along for the ride was, remains, an empty thing, dead and deadly. Though they claim otherwise with a kind of desperation, the motives behind New Labour were never animated by a guiding principle. The ideals they did hold dear were tawdry things. And they never could, even in opposition, distinguish between means and ends. That has consequences.

You want a true scandal, an authentic example of how New Labour's appetites have eradicated the remnants of a political movement? It didn't make the front pages. Nevertheless, the Commons public accounts committee has at last obliged the Treasury - Gordon Brown's Treasury, until recently - to admit the actual cost of PFI schemes, Gordon Brown's PFI schemes, to the taxpayer. Over the next 25 years we will pay out £170bn for deals generating huge profits while services decline and the pretence of competitive tendering evaporates. The Labour Party did that.

Blair gave us wars and "reform", the surrender of public services to private ends and means. Brown gave us targets and managerialism, the unchecked growth in inequality and the PFI scam. A government dedicated to the attitudes and aspirations of the right, in other words, and a government freely elected. But what does Labour do, what does Labour become, after the "new" party comes finally to grief? What's left?

Who could name the leader likely to follow Brown, or say what he or she might stand for? Who still counts on the Liberals as a social-democratic alternative? Scots inclined to exempt the SNP from the rightward drift of these islands should read a recent interview with Alex Salmond in the Spectator: tax-cutting and Tory nationalism are prominent in the discussion.

There is nothing ordained about a "left alternative". Even the phrase can be made to sound quaint, these days. But Blair and Brown did more than talk. They did their very best to make sure that alternatives would seem forever impossible. Now nothing remains, save shabby means disguised as hypocritical ends"

Hell mend

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Another fiasco, but Brown is forever a sucker for business: "The truth is that New Labour has been a sucker for "business" from the moment in the early 1990s when Blair and Brown decided to curry favour with the City. Eager to seem business-friendly, Brown abandoned his pledge to reverse Thatcher's union legislation and privatisation. He decided never to raise income or business taxes, and bizarrely chose Geoffrey Robinson as his buddy. His only act of delegation, ever, was to the one profession he trusted, the financiers of the Bank of England.

The word business still mesmerises Brown. To most people the occupation is about making money. To Brown it is a mysterious priesthood of infinite competence. To build a school or hospital, run a prison or plan an urban renewal, you must pledge partnership with a "businessman". Private money is always good, public bad.

If business wants a new runway at Heathrow, Brown orders one. If business wants the planning regime collapsed, he will collapse it. If business worries over capital gains tax, it will be heard. Never was the maxim, what is good for General Motors is good for the nation, so enshrined in one man. Any theory that Brown is not a real Thatcherite is rubbish.

In Brown's Britain there is no longer a public service ethos, only a business ethos applied to public services. No longer do Presbyterians render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's. Everything goes to Caesar under a private finance initiative.

After a decade of getting their fingers burned by business links to politics, Brown and his colleagues should surely have been streetwise. Apparently not. Despite reforms requiring openness in donations in 1997, despite the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and despite the trauma of cash-for-honours, nothing was learned.

As Brown thrashed about yesterday he decided there was no rescue from within. He showed the depths of his despair when, as if on his deathbed, he summoned a lawyer and a priest, Judge McCluskey and the former Bishop of Oxford, Lord Harries, hoping for the umpteenth time to "restore trust in the political process". They may save his party from the courts and his soul from damnation. But what do they know of business?

Brown has been woefully served by his infatuation with high finance. Men and women whose sole skill is the pursuit of money have been corralled into the public sector and given tasks way beyond their vocation. They have been honoured with jobs, gongs and contracts. Their money has been taken under the counter. Civil servants have been demeaned and demoralised, and public service has rotted in the process."

Apt comment

haveone November 21, 2007 1:17 AM

"Be careful what you wish for indeed....the sad fact is that when Labour finally gets thrown out (which is looking more likely to be sooner rather than later), it is their more progressive accomplishments that will be reversed, not their failures. The Conservatives will continue the Thatcherite pulse of the the 'New' part of Labour, while devastating the meager redistributive legacy of Brown's tenure as Chancellor...it is bit demoralizing, but it shows how pandering to the swing vote is never a sustainable policy becasue you may get power, but you can't ever be bold enough to make truly significant and sustainable changes....NewLab was always leaning too much toward the minimalist reforming reactionary social stance that made the LibDems seem like radical freedom fighters (quite a task really). Ah yes, the sad, yet inevitable decline and death of an idea (NewLabbism) that should never have really been allowed into adolescence."

astute comment on run of the mill grauniad article
Jonathan Freedland: The sheer gormlessness of Discgate theatens Labour's claim to power | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics

Elizabeth my dear

Tear me apart and boil my bones
Ill not rest till shes lost her throne
My aim is true my message is clear
Its curtains for you, elizabeth my dear

Clock this

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Spring forward, fall back: "whenever politicians turn their attention to calendars and clocks, we should take a long hard look beyond the apparently innocuous practical benefits proposed. There is bound to be something more considerable at stake than an extra hour in bed. "

Cash... but no honour

BBC NEWS | Politics | Blair accused of 'gold-digging': "Tony Blair has been accused of 'gold-digging' and 'money-sucking' after he reportedly charged £240,000 for giving a speech in China. The China Youth Daily newspaper said the address had been like 'listening to some domestic county or city-level official' and had given 'nothing new'."

Roots: #66

Take it Easy in Winslow, Arizona | Music | Guardian Unlimited Music: "...while Paul Klee was holed up in Switzerland painting pictures of cute little kitty-cats, Adolf Hitler was wiping out European civilization. And at the very same time that Led Zeppelin IV and Exile on Main Street seemed to be dominating the airwaves, the folk-rocky Eagles were dominating a different frequency on the airwaves with what came to be known as the California sound...while many people believed that they were living through the era of Bowie and disco and heavy metal and punk, the most popular band of the era was writing songs about standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. This proves, incontrovertibly, that there is no such thing as 'reality,' that it all depends on your age, ethnic group, and how much liquor you've consumed."

How true. In many ways for us The Eagles were the enemy, the kind of band the blowdried girls we kind of fancied fancied and not us. The bittersweet pain of having to learn how to play Take It Easy, to actually perform Already Gone, to have to listen to Hotel California on every jukebox in a one jukebox town. I even still like Desperado. Now I remember what The Clash and Joy Division were trying to save us all from. Did they manage?

Argument for 100% inheritance tax... retrospective!

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | George Monbiot: Governments aren't perfect, but it's the libertarians who bleed us dry: "He took up his post - which was previously held by his father, Viscount Ridley - in 2004. Under his chairmanship, the Economist notes, Northern Rock 'pushed an aggressive business model to the limit, crossing its fingers and hoping that liquidity would always be there'. It was allowed to do so because it was insufficiently regulated by the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority. When his libertarian business model failed, Ridley had to go begging to the detested state. If the government and its parasitic bureaucrats had not been able to use taxpayers' money to clear up his mess, thousands of people would have lost their savings. Northern Rock would have collapsed, and the resulting panic might have brought down the rest of the banking system. The £16bn bailout is not the end of the matter. Last week the Treasury granted Northern Rock's customers a new tax break. Now one of the north-east's leading businessmen, Sir Michael Darrington, is calling for the bank's full-scale nationalisation in order to prevent further crises. So much for the virtues of unregulated free enterprise."

There, there, Theremin

:::::: MOOG MUSIC ::::::: "In 1922 he [Theremin] demonstrated for Lenin the Aetherphone, an early model of the Thereminvox (later shortened to Theremin). During this period Lenin was certain that electronics would play a necessary role in the development of Communism in Russia."

Star quality

The Herald: Review: The Doctor and the Devils, Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow: "This is a typically handsome production from the Young Co - a hay-strewn set by Neil Haynes gives the circle studio a suitably grubby feel - with some strong performances. Martin Haddow is compelling and charismatic as the arrogant Knox, Fraser Hamilton makes a sympathetic Daft Jamie and Michael Burns plays Hare as a boisterous character who appears completely disconnected from the killings."

Good question...

John Harris on the two frontrunners for the Lib Dem leadership | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "Imagine, however, if there was a contest for the top job in one of the main parties and the leading contenders were both alumni of, say, a comprehensive in south Manchester. What kind of weird, conspiratorial, messed-up world would that suggest?"

Simple answer. Very.

'Criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly'

Archbishop attacks neocons over US threat to bomb Iran | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited: "'When people talk about further destabilisation of the region - and you read some American political advisers speaking of action against Syria and Iran - I can only say that I regard that as criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly."

From irrelevant headlining bishop (below) to absolutely devastating critique of US foreign policy hawks by archbishop (above). Well said Dr Williams.

Boo!

Stores agree to take horror out of Halloween | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited: "A Church of England bishop campaigning to rebrand Halloween as a 'triumph of good over evil' claimed victory yesterday after two supermarkets agreed to stock less sinister alternatives to the usual monster masks and devil costumes."

and perhaps even worse...

"He also urged people to go online and donate their Halloween treat to the Children's Society as an antidote to the sometimes "intimidating" and "low-level antisocial behaviour" of trick or treat. In return people could download a poster for their window, telling people not to call as the treat had already gone to charity, he said."

Scary, eh?

Borwick, Warwick and Boff beaten by toff for chance to fail

Johnson chosen as Tory candidate for London mayor | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics
Little comment required else.

Shock of the... what?

Shurely shome mishtake Naomi...

Extract: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein | Naomi Klein | Guardian Unlimited Books: "The Falklands war in 1982 served a similar purpose for Margaret Thatcher: the disorder resulting from the war allowed her to crush the striking miners and to launch the first privatisation frenzy in a western democracy."

I'm a fan of Naomi Klein, but this paragraph exhibits a grip on reality closer to Naomi Campbell... I was no fan of that war, and supported the miners, but there was no "disorder" in Britain due to the war. It's almost as if Klein think the UK was invaded by the Argies! If she wanted to link the Thatcher regime in to (very interesting) "disaster capitalism" thesis, it would be more plausible to look at the shock therapy of deliberate mass unemployment created by this early zealot of Friedmanite economics.

Essential reading: Seumas Milne on "Essential misreading"

Comment is free: Essential misreading: "There's now a well-established tradition in Britain of recantations by people who have moved from left to right, and either try to justify their embrace of the powers-that-be or, alternatively, insist they haven't changed at all, it's their former allies who've abandoned their principles. The genre goes back at least to the anti-communist tome The God that Failed"

I like this article, and it links back to the even more excellent piece he wrote in the grauniad immediately after the september 11 attacks, which stands up better than ever. Seumas Milne for president.

Friends like these

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Good news from Baghdad at last: the oil law has stalled: "the administration - particularly the vice-president, Dick Cheney - and the oil lobby are enraged that the oil law is stalled. The main reason is not that the Iraqi government and parliament are a lazy bunch of Islamist incompetents or narrow-minded sectarians, as is often implied. MPs are studying the law more carefully, and have begun to see it as a major threat to Iraq's national interest regardless of people's religion or sect.

This is the second bit of good news from Iraq. Civil society, trade unions, professional oil experts and the media are stirring on the oil issue and putting their points across to parliament in the way democracy is meant to work. The oil unions have held strikes even at the risk of having leaders and members arrested."

Pointlessly combative

Here's a laugh.

Not such a lovely bloke | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books: "It's hard, of course, to keep an altogether straight face while reading such an apologia, and anyone who has ever bumped into the man whom Charles Moore memorably described as 'the most pointlessly combative person in human history' is going to pick this book up with an outsize pair of tongs, wondering at exactly what level of honesty it is meant to be operating. Campbell does self-doubt in the same way that Nixon did repentance and Clinton contrition. Campbell himself has damaged his own claims to authenticity by admitting to excising from publication anything that might either advance the cause of the Conservative party or damage the standing of the new prime minister. The account of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq is so gappy as to be historically valueless."

The levels of honesty are many. The impression of unvarnished, first-hand is probably accurate; but the facts are obviously not all there and the judgements are all over the place.

The main illusion is that Campbell manipulated the media. What really happened was Blair and Brown did a deal (tacit, explicit?) with Murdoch and got the Sun off Labour's back and onside by handing Murdoch most of what he wanted in terms of regulation and policy.

Ozzie-man(d)ias

erk alors

Ray Ozzie, Scott Guthrie: MIX '07: "You can also go ahead and set up what we call autoplay mode, and this is going to let .NET run against the browser, native JavaScript inside the browser. (Laughter.) The difference you can see in terms of the number of nodes that .NET can go ahead and process versus the -- 1.5 million per second versus JavaScript. (Cheers, applause.)"

New statesmen

Published in the Morning Star

(Thursday 12 July 2007)

MALCOLM BURNS

MALCOLM BURNS wonders whether the Scottish Nationalist win might finally force Labour to take stock north of the border.

GREETINGS from the new Caledonia! Well, maybe not quite. We are all still trying to come to terms with what really happened in the Scottish elections in May.

This is just my take, as an active Labour Party member and a socialist now living with a new minority nationalist government.

What I am going to write - I actually think that the SNP government is a breath of fresh air and, so far, appears much more democratic and open than its predecessor - will be dismissed as an illusion by many Labour supporters.

So, I am going to start with a quote about the May election.

"This was a campaign that showed Labour at its best - Tony Blair magnificent, leading from the front, finding exactly the right words, always able to change the political weather."

That grand fantasy, that touchstone of self-delusion, is nothing less than the post-election assessment by Blair's own in-house polling guru Philip Gould. You could find the full insane monty in the May 14 New Statesman.

With advisers and hubris like this, it is not surprising that Britain is mired in the disaster of Iraq.

Oh dear. Where to start? It's almost as though Blair had actually won us the Scottish elections, despite our whinging Jock uselessness.

Labour lost. The SNP won. Gould's "arrogant and presumptuous" Alex Salmond is first minister, capably exercising executive power. Gould's "street-fighting" Jack McConnell is somewhat shell-shocked - gamely still leading the opposition, but with no power left, not even in local government apart from Glasgow and North Lanarkshire. Hell will freeze over before they go, McConnell probably hopes.

Maybe I just feel more cheerful about everything because Gould's "magnificent" Blair is now our leader no more, effectively forced out of office, despite the tedious extended exit. Good riddance.

In fact, so far, the new Scottish government has not put a foot wrong.

What did you expect? Chaos in the streets? A sudden cataclysmic parting of the largest British isle, between Gretna and Berwick?

In Scotland, the shallowness of our official Labour campaign could exactly be measured by the fears which were spun in desperate tabloid campaigns. The election-day Sun splash showed an SNP noose around Scotland's neck.

Fear may indeed have shored up the Labour vote in the last day or two. But it looks increasingly irrational, as the SNP government effortlessly eclipses the previous administration in being sensible, capable and even likeable - yes, Salmond's irritating smug duckling has turned into, if not a swan, then at least a statesperson. A new statesman, in fact.

The election was never really about independence, which is anyway not supported by the majority of Scots. Salmond's masterstroke was to effectively remove the issue through the promise of a referendum.

Now, we are not talking about independence anymore. But we are doing politics - and some of it opens to the left.

I know that we are far from abolishing Trident or cancelling its replacement. But I am glad that our new government has that as a policy.

I am an agnostic in the debate about restructuring the NHS which poses a few big centres of excellence against many local general hospitals. Why can't we have sufficient of each?

But I know that I support the aim of ending privatisation in the NHS in Scotland. I know that I support the aim of ending PFI/PPP in public-sector projects.

I should also say that Salmond has been sensible and wise in responding to the recent Glasgow airport bomb attack and has calmly and astutely included and represented the whole Scottish people in his response. He also opposed the war, which adds to his credibility.

I hear old new Labour hacks - even those who recently were Holyrood ministers with executive power themselves, even some still in power in Westminster - desperately waiting and hoping for the SNP train to come off the rails. But I just don't see Salmond gifting power back to a hackneyed McNuLab. Labour needs to change to win Scotland back.

True, a lot of the SNP promises and decisions already taken will be costly to implement. Doubtless, there will be painful cuts or cancellations to pay for some of these. I do also know that the SNP is pinning unrealistic and quite right-wing hopes on big capital and low corporation tax.

That sounds familiar. We don't have a left-wing government in Scotland and I am under no illusions.

I have the impression that many beleaguered socialists down south, whether Labour supporters or not, have over the years harboured hopes that there was a left-wing lion in the far north which would rise and show the way for the whole of Albion.

True, the SSP as led by Tommy Sheridan had five MSPs in the last Scottish Parliament. But hope in the shape of the SSP was always illusory. This is the official SSP post-election assessment.

"We fought in hope and we got beat. Big time. But (the) electoral rout does not mean that the Scottish Socialist Party is a spent force, or that we're about to implode."

Dream on. Even the Socialist Labour Party, which has no organisation at all in Scotland, got more votes than the SSP. And that wasn't a lot.

The Labour Party needs to learn the lessons of the defeat in Scotland. It's worth looking at the refreshingly realistic approach being taken by Labour in Wales, where - much to the chagrin of the party leadership at Westminster - Rhodri Morgan has been negotiating a coalition with Plaid Cymru on the sensible, even modestly left-wing, One Wales platform.

In fact, Scottish Labour could and should have had more sensible, even left-wing, policies before the last election, of the kind regularly voted for in trade union and even Labour Party conferences.

Labour lost in Scotland because our generals were out of touch with the Scottish people, having even failed to deliver for many of our core voters - percentage turnout in many safe Labour seats in the election was in the low thirties.

The SNP, cleverly led by Salmond, exploited Scottish Labour's hopeless enslavement by the London machine.

Labour needs to change. And the left in the Labour Party and the unions - north and south of the border - must lead that change.

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For peace and socialism - the only socialist daily paper in the English language

The network will pick up the whole of human history

Yeah, this is what we think...

BBC NEWS | Technology | The Tech Lab: Charles Stross: "We've had agriculture for about 12,000 years, towns for eight to 10,000 years, and writing for about 5,000 years. But we're still living in the dark ages leading up to the dawn of history."

Charles Stross says we (humans) are about to lose the bad habit, and even the capability, of forgetting.

I see Charles lives in Edinburgh - maybe he would like to drop in on Dropping The network Out Of The Dakota...

Other thoughts... Clearly the remembering and the forgetting have a close relationship. Would you prefer to forget? Is it more painful to remember? Is it an open door to tyranny if we forget? And of course, what is true?

Dropping the network out of the dakota

Wouldn't you love to go to a Mysterian night with Andrew Back and Scott Savage DJs, and a special appearance by The Drugs, and this band:

Mother and the Addicts Press Release:

"In the studio, the band sought to get the most out of a limited range of equipment: guitars, bass, drums and an old Yamaha CS5 – resulting in an album that’s resolutely modern whilst throwing affectionate nods and winks to the ghosts of classics past. It’s rooted in the type of music that offered an ‘eight-hour escape’ from the drudgery of the working week; that celebrated the lure of the dance floor, the soundtrack of a Saturday night. Mother And The Addicts are very much a throwback to all of those bands that were skilled at what they played and knew how to get a party started…

“The best music always recognises the clash between the sweet and the sour – disco always had its hangover. I’ve never managed to fully get the American ‘rawk’ thing and have always felt more drawn to the kind of acerbic intelligence you find in British and US post-punk bands, there’s also an affinity with reggae, soul, and disco - a lot of my family had been skin heads and soul boys when I was growing up and they introduced me to that type of thing.”"

We should call it Dropping The Network Out Of The Dakota...

Here's the old Mysterian "flyers"...

Maeve Mackinnon - Don't Sing Lovesongs (Foot Stompin' Records)

Published in the Morning Star
(Friday 06 July 2007)

An artful blend

ALBUM: Maeve Mackinnon - Don't Sing Lovesongs

(Foot Stompin' Records)

"DON'T sing love songs, you'll wake my mother" is the gently ironic refrain from Maeve Mackinnon, the young Celtic singer stepping out here with an accomplished first album.

Mackinnon's artful blend of Scots, Irish and US ballads around an eclectic core of traditional Gaelic songs is backed by musicians who range easily from folk to jazz and even classical moods.

She also finds room for some Gaelic puirt-a-beul - mouth music.

As a Scot with political as well as musical roots, Mackinnon credits Dick Gaughan as an influence, which is clearly heard on her version of Child ballad The Cruel Brother.

And the album's cool, modern feel is emphasised with a refreshing take on hackneyed pub chant The Wild Rover.

MALCOLM BURNS

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...that many pools, eh?

BBC NEWS | UK | TVs 'dumped after digital switch': "Eight million machines - enough to fill 100 Olympic swimming pools - will be ditched, according to the poll of 2,500 UK adults."

A bizarre day for TV and swimming pools indeed...

from BBC News website currently:
MOST POPULAR STORIES NOW
* MOST READ
* TVs 'dumped after digital switch' (above)
* Pool death police hold Barrymore http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/6751965.stm

Blog brother - spot on, elywhitely!

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - TV & radio: Big Brother: once again, a show cast for exhibitionism and division:

elywhitely

Comment No. 536396

May 31 9:52
Luton/gbr

when the twins went in I thought, 'ah well, they've got the brainless teenage screamers out of the way, now for some interesting characters.' And so it continued,'oh... well then that's the wannabe WAG sorted... and so on." Before you could say "oh my god!" it was over and we were left with the world's best organised slumber party. I almost expect Freddie Kruger to be the male introduced on Friday so this teen flick can get started proper.
Tracey seems to be the only genuinely interesting person in spite of her need to speak fluent Bez and make hands signals like a bookie using binary code. Everyone else, even the 'kick ass earth mother' who looks like she should be from Eastwick rather than East London, will turn out to be just another boring person who made a bucketload of outrageous claims to the interview camera to get on the show. They all shout and pout on their tapes, "I'm mental I am!", "Oh, my god you've never seen anything like me before!", "I'm a man-eating psycho lesbian from the future and clothes make me ill so I tend to use decapitation as a defense mechanism!" and once inside those garish walls it's all, "Are there any more tea bags?" and "Who left the toilet seat up?

Coughing up for the coronation

Brown 'coronation' prompts new call for snap election | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "With Labour's internal finances believed to be in poor shape in the wake of the cash-for-honours investigation, and Mr Brown trailing to the Tories, it is highly unlikely that the chancellor would decide to go to the polls rather than govern until 2009 or 2010."

Not to the polls, but to the party and the unions... for the cash... they should expect something in return.

A quandary for Brown?

Now that Meacher has stepped aside, McDonnell has a clear run to get 45 nominations... or does he? As everyone should understand, the first 40 supporters are easier to get than the forty-first. And the forty-second is harder... and so on. It could all hinge on one or two MPs who didn't fancy McDonnell in the first place being persuaded, cajoled or even forced at the last minute.

So who/what would persuade them?

The power in the land is Brown - he could "lend" the votes, as McDonnell joked in the Fabian "hustings" on Sunday night.

But would he? My feeling is Brown doesn't want a contest. If so he'll not just be reluctant to "lend" votes but will be actively trying now to derail McDonnell's campaign for leader before it reaches the dangerous and unpredictable stage of actually becoming real.

Brown will want to appear hands-off, and claim it's just hard luck if there's no support.

:-|

We'll see, that's for sure.

Media circus may puzzle the voters

Media circus may puzzle the voters | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "In fact the day's one piece of authentic, unscripted news is whether Michael Meacher or John McDonnell will have the votes to go forward as the left's challenger, hoping to open up the debate and undermine the Brown-Blair consensus which they fear Mr Brown will embrace too readily.

My money is on Mr McDonnell, the more solid candidate of the two, the one least likely to say 9/11 was a US plot or something equally daft. Like John Cruddas, the thoughtful leftwing candidate for the deputy leadership, he does not assume that Middle England is Labour's only electoral priority or that the heartlands can be taken for granted.

Dagenham - Mr Cruddas's seat - and Hayes and Harlington - Mr McDonnell's - may be on either side of London, but both have more than their share of poverty and hardship. Working-class voters concerned with bread and butter issues - the 'social wage' that is good public schools and hospitals - are as disaffected as Islington liberals for whom Iraq and civil liberties are Tony Blair's real failures."

A decade of Blair... Labour on its knees

This from the Grauniad by Neal Lawson, I idn't notice till today. Always refreshing when the Blairites recant.

A decade of Blair has left the Labour party on its knees | Comment | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "The answer takes us back to Labour's fourth election defeat in 1992. At that moment, the party sank to its collective knees and vowed to do whatever it took to win next time. "

This is correct, apart from the fact that it was 1987, not 1992 when the sinking to the knees moment happened. That was the point where Kinnock brought Mandelson in closest to the throne.

In my own personal experience people like John Reid and Tom Sawyer were completely broken men in 1988, 1989. I know, I spoke to them and was amazed at their attitude. "It's all over, socialism is off the agenda, we can never win..." I paraphrase...

They, and such as them, were ripe for Blair. John Smith, though, got in the way. He moved Mandelson back outside the leader's tent - a good call. Surely no-one doubts Smith would have won in 1997? I completely disagree with the "Blair the best political communicator of his generation" bullshit. That's just starry-eyed stuff (now stary-eyed, of course). I could have won that election, so could you.

But by then Smith had died and Blair moved in on the broken men who were to become the "outriders". Then Blair and Mandy fucked Labour. Now here we are having wasted an unprecedented amount of political capital in war-crime blood and privatisation tears.

Hell mend us for letting Blair in.

Talkin' bout a revolution (again)?

BBC NEWS | Programmes | From Our Own Correspondent | Moscow's suburb for billionaires: "How exactly these people have got hold of such vast wealth in such a short time is a very good question, and one many ordinary Russians would like answered."

And

""They're all thieves," she said. "All that money is stolen from the people."

It's a view millions of Russians would agree with. Fifteen years ago everything in Russia was owned by the state. Today a quarter of Russia's economy is owned by 36 men. "

First time I have seen the question posed as clearly as this in a mainstream media article. What gives...

Jackie Sparrow

YouTube - Jackie Sparrow

Tracy Beaker Gets Real, King's Theatre, Edinburgh, Sat 7 April 2007

Published in the Morning Star
(Wednesday 18 April 2007)

Top kids fun in stage debut

Tracy Beaker Gets Real

King's Theatre, Edinburgh

EDINBURGH'S beautiful old King's Theatre is packed with kids and their parents - or, perhaps, their carers - and it's buzzing as hundreds of young paws rustle sweet packets and cartons of juice.

They're all on their best behaviour, though, because tonight Tracy Beaker Gets Real. As the lights go down and the curtain comes up, the hundreds of bright eyes are rapt.

The children's publishing phenomenon of Tracy Beaker has made her creator Jacqueline Wilson a rich and respected author. Rightly so - the books are brilliant and the BBC TV show is required viewing for kids with attitude from five to 15.

The eponymous heroine lives in a care home which she and the other inmates call "the Dumping Ground."

Tracy is, in the jargon of her straightlaced social worker Elaine the Pain, "hard to place" on account of her sassy attitude, which undermines her unending quest for a foster family who will love her, but which also makes her irresistible to readers and audiences.

Much of the drama in the story springs from Tracy's fantasy visions of her ne'er-do-well single mum, who in reality has left her in care, and it translates powerfully and movingly to the stage.

This first-ever theatrical adaptation, written by Mary Morris and realised by the Nottingham Playhouse company, had a successful premiere and short tour last year.

Its April run in Edinburgh kicked off a marathon trek around theatres in towns and cities across the British Isles, continuing throughout the summer.

The production is certainly true to the essence of the first book, The Story of Tracy Beaker, published in 1991, and to the look and feel of the BBC series.

Pippa Duffy, the young actress playing Tracy, nails the stage part with an authority matching the benchmark set by the TV show's star Danielle Harmer.

And not just one but two performances of real merit are put in by Emma Thornett, who plays both Tracy's reprehensible mum and her soppy care-home friend Louise so effectively that you might be surprised to find that it was just one actor in these very different roles.

The play is a musical and each character gets a keynote song. The music is mainly bright and lively, with an excellent band.

The words are sometimes a little quick and complex for younger children, but the acting telegraphs the meaning effectively.

Even Elaine the Pain (played by Natasha Seale) has a showstopping number towards the end and joins in a group hug. A must-see show for Beaker fans and their parents - or carers.

On tour now. Plays Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Mold, from April 24-28. Box office: 0845 330-3565. Then Malvern, Wolverhampton, Aberdeen, Belfast, Buxton, Poole, Nottingham, Hackney, Tunbridge Wells, Leeds, Manchester and Milton Keynes. Visit www.tracybeakertour.co.uk for full tour schedule, box-office information and other details.

MALCOLM BURNS

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Unions back Labour by single vote

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Unions back Labour by single vote: "Unions back Labour by single vote

Labour has narrowly retained the formal endorsement of Scotland's trades unions for the Holyrood and council elections.

The general council of the STUC has agreed by one vote to back a Labour victory as being in the best interests of workers.

Public service union Unison was among those which refused to support the STUC taking a party political position."

oh dear oh dear

"Scotland turns its back on Labour..."

Scotland turns its back on Labour, and on Brown | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "Labour is now desperate to avoid its first election defeat in Scotland in 50 years. It wants to concentrate on investing in education, its 'full employment agency', new community courts, and the SNP's 'dangerous and disastrous' economic policies. But the voters seem intent on punishing Labour on May 3: the polls which give the SNP a lead also show fewer Scots would support independence, the SNP's core demand, so it is not nationalism driving its popularity."

Not nationalism - and not the economy, stupid. So what? Step forward Tony. It's you and New Labour. Looks like you've blown all that political capital in just 10 years.

Bang, crash, stab...

The sound of McNuLab imploding...

The Sunday Herald - Scotland's award-winning independent newspaper: "A new survey, carried out for Scottish Opinion, put the Nationalists on 40% of the constituency vote, ahead of Labour's 28%. It also gave the SNP an 11% lead on the regional list vote, with Alex Salmond's party on 39% and Labour on 28%.
advertisement

A seat projection carried out for the Mail on Sunday put the SNP on 56 seats, with Labour behind on 40.

The results come on top of Labour's internal polls, which are finding the party at least five points behind the SNP.

Labour pollster Philip Gould admitted the deficit at a briefing last week, at which McConnell said: 'We're behind. Our private polls show us behind.'"

Oh dear, once more...

Britain delivers damning verdict on Blair's 10 years | Politics | The Observer: "Despite some independent evidence that services have improved and the economy has performed well compared with other industrialised nations, the poll shows how damning the public's verdict is on Blair and his government.

The poll, carried out for The Observer for a special supplement on his decade in power, will increase concerns among Labour's high command that the party is facing electoral defeat in the crucial national elections in Scotland and Wales and the local elections in England next month. It could also mean that Gordon Brown, if he wins the subsequent leadership election, will be handed an almost impossible political legacy to deal with.

The poll reveals that almost half of voters consider the outgoing Prime Minister as out of touch, untrustworthy and overly concerned with spin, while 57 per cent think he has stayed in office too long. And despite the billions of pounds poured into health care, more than half rate the government's performance on the NHS as poor or very poor in a sign that even Labour's traditional strengths are becoming dangerously eroded."

More blood, smoothly

Smoothly.

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Former Iraq vice-president hanged: "Former Iraq vice-president hanged

Former Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan has been hanged on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion which overthrew Saddam Hussein.

The execution happened before dawn at a prison in northern Baghdad. An Iraqi official said it had gone smoothly."

I, Pod. Ha ha ha

Look what they have done to my town | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics:

I usually pass over Julie Burchill these days, on the basis of her last couple of decades worth of drug crazed overpaid rantings. But here, she's hit the nail. And about real old fashioned politics as well. In a book about Brighton Council and it's typification of New Labour shiny shiny; and in this extract in today's Grauniad. Check it out. Here she uses my own favourite metaphor about NuLab - the bodysnatchers...


"The Labour council that took power over this town in the mid-90s and still has power today is a very New Labour council, led by thwarted idealists, among others, who in the political wilderness of the Thatcher years mutated into strange, free-falling beings to whom power was not a means to an end, but an end in itself. In short, they became Pod Politicians: like their big brothers in government proper, they still went on about social justice and the brotherhood of man, but inside they'd gone all cold and creepy. Peter Mandelson is the greatest example, and in his irresistible rise from Lambeth councillor to Chief European Commissioner for Straight Bananas he serves as a lesson to all ambitious local bean-counters. They say politics is show business for ugly people, and in not one word or deed of Randy Mandy's have I ever been able to discern exactly why he chose to be in politics, apart from the fact that he isn't personable enough to make it in showbiz, which is obviously his first love. Every time I see Dale Winton I want to shout, 'You've got Peter Mandelson's life - give it back to him!'"

Articulating the Labour left is possible...

Another malky post on John4Leader site in comments under post "Saturday, March 03, 2007 Brown Sets Private Sector on Attack on Unemployed"
John McDonnell campaign site

An anonymous troll was mentioning a poll in the Telegraph by Yougov which seemed to indicate poor support for alternatives to Brown as leader of the Labour Party.

malky x said...

Here's the link for the telegraph poll http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/05/nlab105.xml

I agree with Matthew, it's not that gloomy...

...even though the online graphic of the results (you need to click on it to enlarge it on the telegraph site) has McDonnell and Meacher both on 6% in an unlikely hypothetical 4 way contest with Brown and Miliband.

Here's that part of the poll result:

"In any contest for the labour leadership, who would you vote for if the following candidates were nominated?
Brown 52%
Miliband 14%
Meacher 6%
McDonnell 6%
Not sure 18%
Would not vote 5%"

Meacher and McDonnell are not going to be on the same ballot (in my view it should be McDonnell, on the merits of the campaign and platform outlined on this blog) - so on this poll there is a 12% left vote and a 14% right/ultra Blairite.

One important question is: what about the 18% not sure and the 5% who say they would not vote for any pf these? Large numbers of don't knows/won't says are often indicative of shifting ground.

(I couldn't see a result showing McDonnell 10%, with Meacher behind on ?% - can anyone post a link or a copy of that result?)

However, the most interesting part of the poll for me was this:

"To go on winning elections, Labour needs to govern from the Centre, not to adopt more Left-wing policies
Agree 55%
Disagree 35%
Don't know 10%"

Implication being that even after ten years of members leaving because they are disillusioned with Blairism, there is still over a third who wish policy was more left wing than it is, with a further 10% undecided. The "Centre ground" (Blair/Brown/Mandelson-speak for right wing!) strategy commands a majority, but it is not overwhelming - far from it.

Indeed, this corresponds with our own view that there is a much broader base of support for sensible (even democratically agreed, and socialist) policy than is often supposed or spun.

That is why Brown doesn't want a credible left candidate. That is why there appears to be almost visible pressure being brought to bear on MPs who might otherwise support or even nominate McDonnell (I don't really think Brown fears Meacher).

John's campaign is clearly designed to articulate the views of that large minority of party members.

It is based solidly on democratically agreed policies of the Labour party and its trade union affiliates, and has touched grassroots parts of the party other candidates find it difficult to reach.

Personally I think that if John McDonnell can get on the ballot paper, the pundits would be surprised at the high level of support he will get in the party (ie amongst constituency and union members).

Getting on the ballot paper depends to a large extent now on getting on the telly, on the radio, in the papers and in the blogs.

More exposure for McDonnell in the media! It can only be of benefit to ordinary, loyal and sensible Labour Party and trade union members like myself, and the majority of ordinary working people who out party should represent but has been so sadly failing in so many ways through the Blair years.

Go on yoursel' John!

9:06 PM

Kilda the opera

The Herald : Europe unites to stage St Kilda the opera
:
PHIL MILLER, Arts Correspondent March 02 2007

"It was known as the isles at the end of the world.

Now St Kilda, the lonely archipelago whose last inhabitants were evacuated in 1930, is to be the focal point of a new £1m opera which will unite five European countries.

On June 22 and 23, St Kilda, A European Opera, will be performed simultaneously in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and in Studio Alba, in Stornoway."

The kids are alright, eh?

Citizens Theatre : Productions

THE CHICAGO PROJECT
Directed by Neil Packham

Steppenwolf Theatre’s Cross Town Ensemble and Citizens’ Young Co. team up once more to present new work by young American playwrights. Continuing to forge international links in a mutual exchange of talent and ideas, young Glaswegians perform new contemporary plays written by young Chicagoans. CITIZENS YOUNG CO. is sponsored by Fairway Forklifts Ltd and supported by The W.A. Cargill Fund

Dates: Thu 5 April - Sat 7 April

Ticket prices: £6 full price, £3 all concessions

Get on the ballot paper John!

My comment on John4Leader site under post about "New Labour Privatises the Probation and Prison Services tonight - Wednesday, February 28, 2007"
John McDonnell campaign site

Malky x said...

Of course, probation in Scotland was not being privatised last night, and it's not run the same way here anyway. But the New Labour ideologues in charge of the party here are still forcing through their privatisation drive - and indeed it's now fronting the Scottish Parliament election campaign.

Under the heading "Nationalists warned over PPP" today's Herald (biggest Scottish quality daily paper, published in Glasgow) reports:

"Labour clashed with the SNP yesterday over funding for new schools and hospitals, with ministers claiming that Nationalist opposition to private finance would result in cancellation of hundreds of projects."
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.1226688.0.0.php

Yep. We're aguing privatisation is good. They're arguing that it's not (there are plenty of problems with what the SNP is arguing for, but that's for another discussion).

Unfortunately for NuLab and McNuLab, privatisation is still obviously putting voters off in droves. The same issue of the Herald contains the latest poll results:

"On the constituency voting intentions, covering 1004 people between 23 and 26 February, ICM put the SNP on 34%, Labour on 29%, and the Liberal Democrats and Tories each on 16%.
"That represents a change on ICM's findings from January of a one point gain for the SNP, two points down for Labour, with the LibDems down one and Tories up three. The smaller parties shared 4%."

You can read that again. Labour 29%. In Scotland.

Our election campaign here is in crisis. The usual scare tactics about breaking up Britain are no longer working; the First Minister's top backroom election adviser quit last week to spend more time with his family; and high profile visits by Blair and Brown seem (how strange) to have only confirmed the SNP lead in the polls.

And here is what the actual MSP candidates think, according to Herald Political Editor Douglas Fraser: "Labour may wheel out big election guns but MSPs want it local"

"...ask those MSPs hoping to return to Holyrood after May 3, and many say they'll be running local campaigns. Would they like a visit from Tony Blair or Jack McConnell? Er, thanks all the same, they say, but that really won't be necessary.
"Instead, they want to play on Labour loyalties, firming up a vote that feels soft. Reminders of the current leadership won't help."

http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/holyrood/display.var.1220774.0.0.php

Indeed talk and planning now appears to be for damage limitation. The Labour vote *is* now incredibly "soft". Even in Scotland "our people" are ever less enthused about voting Labour. The usual expectation would be for the Labour vote to firm up as polling day approaches. But the candidates are nervous, more nervous than ever. We might be about to lose comprehensively in Scotland for the first time in generations.

John's analysis on this blog is spot on, and confirmed in what is often supposed to be natural labour territory up here in Scotland. NuLab has squandered the opportunity of 10 years ago, yet marches blindly forward towards its self willed precipice.

Blair is a liability. So is Brown (even up here - viz Dunfermline West by election disaster just over a year ago). It's not all about Iraq by any means, though clearly that's destroyed trust in the government; we need to start representing our people again - and we can't do that by the kind of right wing "cost of everything value of nothing" public-bad-private-good neocon market ideology that has led us to this dismal situation (and of the kind we can only imagine Clarke and Milburn will promote with their "stalking elephant" website).

John's calm, reasoned and moderate campaign, based firmly on democratically agreed policies and a wise socialist interpretation of the daily realities faced by the vast majority of people, stands in clear contrast to the swaggering but empty and vicious snake oil peddlers in charge now.

Keep it up John. You are doing a great and essential job for the Labour Party. It's a pretty messy stable to clean up, but we have to start somewhere.

Get on the telly. Get on the radio. Get in the papers. Get in the blogs.

Get on the ballot paper.

And then we'll get the public debate which we need.

12:04 PM

Book review: The Illusion of Return

Latest book review, published in Morning Star yesterday.

Lebanon's slacker underbelly / Books / Culture / Home - Morning Star

Lebanon's slacker underbelly
(Sunday 25 February 2007)
The Illusion of Return by Samir El-Youssef
(Halban £12.99)

IF the past is another country, for the displaced Palestinian diaspora, it is often a journey through many lands, sustained by hope of returning to the life before the disaster of 1948.

Samir El-Youssef, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, now lives in London. His divide-crossing credentials include co-authoring with an Israeli writer. This book is published by an imprint specialising in "books of Jewish interest."

El-Youssef's meditation on the philosophical possibility of "return as a grand concept" is a slim novel competently structured through flashbacks, though with scant imagery.

The style is discursive, but anyone looking for a manifesto will not find it. The end is a negative but inconclusive shrug. Return is not possible... probably.

In some ways, the novel reads like a slacker generation screenplay. The young narrator Samir inhabits the drug scene in Beirut cafes of the early '80s, offering intriguing shades of a Lebanese Trainspotting.

Less compelling are the cardboard cutout political caricatures. Maher the "Marxist" inadvertently encouraging Salim the "worker" to blow up his boss's sweet factory in Beirut merely triggers the plot rather than suspension of disbelief.

MALCOLM BURNS

Lebanon's slacker underbelly: The Illusion of Return by Samir El-Youssef

Published in the Morning Star
(Sunday 25 February 2007)

Lebanon's slacker underbelly

The Illusion of Return by Samir El-Youssef

(Halban £12.99)

IF the past is another country, for the displaced Palestinian diaspora, it is often a journey through many lands, sustained by hope of returning to the life before the disaster of 1948.

Samir El-Youssef, who was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, now lives in London. His divide-crossing credentials include co-authoring with an Israeli writer. This book is published by an imprint specialising in "books of Jewish interest."

El-Youssef's meditation on the philosophical possibility of "return as a grand concept" is a slim novel competently structured through flashbacks, though with scant imagery.

The style is discursive, but anyone looking for a manifesto will not find it. The end is a negative but inconclusive shrug. Return is not possible — probably.

In some ways, the novel reads like a slacker generation screenplay. The young narrator Samir inhabits the drug scene in Beirut cafes of the early '80s, offering intriguing shades of a Lebanese Trainspotting.

Less compelling are the cardboard cutout political caricatures. Maher the "Marxist" inadvertently encouraging Salim the "worker" to blow up his boss's sweet factory in Beirut merely triggers the plot rather than suspension of disbelief.

MALCOLM BURNS

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www.morningstaronline.co.uk

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Down the pan?

Erk alors!

Britain plagued by worst trade deficit since 1697 | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "Britain plagued by worst trade deficit since 1697


· Government statistician admits UK is £56bn in red
· Figures have deteriorated every year since 1997

Angela Balakrishnan and Larry Elliott
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian

Crowning the worst year for the trade deficit since figures for imports and exports were first collected in Stuart times, the government admitted yesterday that Britain was just under £56bn in the red in 2006.

Data from the Office for National Statistics showed that under Tony Blair, Britain's trading performance has been worse than under any of his Labour predecessors. Worse than under Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson, both of whom had to devalue the pound when the trade figures turned nasty, and worse than under James Callaghan, who was forced to seek help from the International Monetary Fund amid the sterling crisis of 1976."

Wondering still...

what all the fighting was about if with a couple of simple steps...

A gift for power | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited:

"only al-Qaida will remain, and we can defeat al-Qaida very easily"

according to placed Iraqi president Talabani.

Writing wrongs on Iran

Comment is free: Caught in a recurring conflict:

"To their colour-blind eyes, blood is not that red; and to their tone-deaf ears, screams are not that harsh. I feel terrified, lost, misplaced in the hands of Martians, to whose expired skins, fire is not that fiery."

"I wish they would attack us with a nuclear bomb and kill us all"

Received this in an email from friends, quoting report in the New York Times

:-|

> "I saw with my own eyes young children flying from the
> windows of the apartments on top of the shops when the
> explosion arrived," said Haydar Abdul Jabbar, 28, a
> car mechanic who was standing near a barber shop when
> the bomb exploded. "One woman threw herself out of the
> window when the fire came close to her."
>
> Mr. Abdul Jabbar said he rushed to collapsed buildings
> trying to help the wounded, but found mainly hands,
> skulls and other body parts.
>
> "The government is supposed to protect us, but they
> are not doing their job," he said. "I watch the TV and
> see the announcements on the imminent implementation
> of the security plan. Where is it, for God's sake?"
>
> "I wish they would attack us with a nuclear bomb and
> kill us all," he added, "so we will rest and anybody
> who wants the oil - which is the core of the problem -
> can come and get it. We can not live this way anymore.
> We are dying slowly every day."

NY Times article here:
Iraqis Fault Pace of U.S. Plan in Attack
from 4 Feb

My correspondent asks:
> Something is afoot when even the New York Times lets
> the truth be reported - how can our respective
> citizens live with the carnage our govts and media
> propagandists have unleashed?

"We're in jail, dude."

Leaked tape shows fatal US attack on British convoy | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited: "'I'm going to be sick,' POPOV35 said, while his colleague swore again and made a crying sound.

'Did you hear?' asked POPOV 35, and got the reply: 'Yeah, this sucks'. POPOV 35 then said: 'We're in jail, dude.'"

Times picks up charges story

Three likely to face charges in Labour loans investigation
Rajeev Syal, Greg Hurst and Angus McLeod
From The Times
February 05, 2007

Three people are likely to face criminal charges arising from the 11-month police investigation into claims that Downing Street improperly offered honours in return for donations.

Crown Prosecution Service lawyers have received files from the police indicating that charges should be brought against three people, although the inquiry is continuing.

“I would be very surprised if they are not charged,” a prosecution source told The Times. The same source said that Tony Blair was likely to be interviewed by the police for a third time because he had yet to answer certain questions.

The three whose position is most serious are those who have already been arrested during the inquiry. Lord Levy, the chief Labour fundraiser and Mr Blair’s Middle East envoy, was arrested twice: in July last year in connection with the misuse of honours and last week, over allegations of perverting the course of justice. Ruth Turner, the No 10 director of government relations, was arrested last month when police called at her home at 6.30am and questioned her for four hours, on suspicion of perverting the course of justice as well as the alleged misuse of honours.

Sir Christopher Evans, the founder of Merlin Biosciences, who secretly lent Labour £1 million before the 2005 general election, was arrested last September. He is the only Labour donor to have been held during the investigation.

Full story here...

A charged situation

Scotsman.com News - Politics - Three Blair allies set to face charges over cash for honours: "After nine months of investigation, during which they have interviewed at least 90 witnesses, the police believe they may have gathered enough evidence to support charging:

• Levy under the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act, which outlaws the offer of honours in return for material gain;

• Levy for 'conspiracy to pervert the course of justice';

• Turner for perverting the course of justice, in relation to her behaviour during the police inquiry;

• Biotech tycoon Sir Christopher Evans, who lent Labour £1m in the run-up to the last election, with 'soliciting' an honour, under the terms of the 1925 legislation."



I can't see this story on the Guardian, BBC or Times sites at present - Sunday afternoon... and I have wondered/still wonder whether charges will actually be brought. We'll see...

Marina says...

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The truth, the whole truth and nothing like the truth: "One can only conclude that we have tumbled far down the rabbit hole. How any Brown administration will claw its way out remains to be seen, but it is an absolute necessity that we return to a discourse in which cases are clearly and consistently made, and original arguments stuck to, even if an expeditious loophole suddenly suggests itself. Any other way, even greater madness lies."

Ever so artful

Here's the Morning Star review I did of The Good, The Bad and The Queen:

The artful dodgers / Music / Culture / Home - Morning Star: "LIVE: The Good, The Bad and The Queen
Motherwell Concert Hall"

Exit strategy

Relocation, relocation: Tony and Cherie buy fifth property | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "The latest acquisition is a Georgian mews house which once served as a stable block for the Connaught Square property. It is likely to be used as a base for Mr Blair's security staff and possibly a flat for Leo Blair's live-in nanny. Building work to connect the two properties is expected to cost about £100,000.

The mews will also improve security for the Blairs, as police have warned that the house in Connaught Square, which has only one entrance on to the street, is particularly risky. The mews offers an alternate entry and exit."

Probably that's a wise move.

The Good, The Bad and The Queen, Motherwell Concert Hall, 30 Jan 2007

Published in the Morning Star
(Friday 02 February 2007)

The artful dodgers

LIVE: The Good, The Bad and The Queen

Motherwell Concert Hall

MALCOLM BURNS checks out Damon Albarn's new supergroup.

It may seem odd that Damon Albarn's latest project, The Good, The Bad and The Queen, with its narrative identity centred so strongly on London, would be given its only Scottish outing of this short tour in Motherwell, a run-down former steel town which is culturally very far from the metropolis.

However, the Concert Hall makes a more than half-decent rock venue. And Albarn puts on more than a half-decent, if artfully downbeat, rock show.

On a stage incongruously laced with bunting in front of an atmospheric image of a Victorian London skyline, a good old days-style music hall master of ceremonies introduces some jugglers.

Then the support act, three members of south London Appalachian band Indigo Moss, run through a handful of stylised bluegrass songs about love and death.

Singer Trevor Moss has a haunting high-pitched wail which stays with you long after he's gone.

When Albarn finally arrives onstage, he looks like a cheery Artful Dodger, wearing a short top hat.

His supergroup in tow features former Clash icon Paul Simonon, star Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen (pictured right) and ex-Verve guitarist Simon Tong, as well as a four-piece string section.

First up is History Song, with its spare lyrics and slightly threatening refrain. It's low key, but then we get a taste of heavy bass from Simonon. Albarn sits at the piano to insert some jangling discords.

Doo-wop pastiche '80s Life brings out more melodramatic bass which matches the lyrics. "I don't want to live a war/That's got no end in our time."

The Kingdom of Doom sounds not unlike the Clash doing London Calling. Albarn and Simonon alternate on vocals, as the lights pick out the red flags in the bunting around them.

The rumbling bass grinds your blood and bones as Simonon struts the stage, pulling contortions like an elongated Norman Wisdom, before shouldering his bass in rocket launcher position.

Song by song, the mood moves from energetic to elegaic.

On reaching The Good, The Bad and The Queen, the final track of the album of the band of the same odd name, Albarn takes the music uptown again, reaching a barrelhouse pitch on piano.

Simonon sings of how the world has been seeming to end with a downbeat apocalyptic whimper.

At the end, this southern expeditionary force seems to have conquered the Caledonian horde.

They return for encores - Albarn plays melodica on a dubwise B-side called Back in the Day, then hands mic duties over to Syrian guest rapper Eslam Jaweed, who is wearing a black keffiyeh to perform in Arabic on another B-side track, Mr Whippy.

Visibly cheered by the enthusiastic applause, Albarn touches his heart like a footballer who's scored and promises: "We'll be coming back to Scotland for sure." Perhaps he didn't expect such a warm response for his downbeat metropolitan elegies.

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Ooops... did it again!

Hello, hello, hello...

BBC NEWS | Politics | Blair interviewed again by police: "Tony Blair has been interviewed for a second time by police investigating cash-for-honours allegations.

Downing Street disclosed that the 45 minute questioning took place in Number 10 last Friday, but was kept secret at the request of the Metropolitan Police."

Ghettoes to the left of them...

A right wing commentator on right wing ideology... sometimes makes a good point.

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | The demagogic cliches of right and left can only make things worse: "If leaders of the right merely squawk 'multiculturalism', some readers of the Daily Mail will understand them to be saying 'these people should adapt to our ways or go back where they came from'. If leaders of the left merely squawk back 'Islamophobia' and 'Iraq', Muslims and city councils will not be compelled to ask the hard questions they need to ask about some of their own community representatives and policies."

"Police arrest Lord Levy"... again

This story seems to have dissapeared from the BBC home page already... curious, that...

I think it might stay a little longer in the public mind though.

BBC NEWS | Politics | Honours police arrest Lord Levy:

"Honours police arrest Lord Levy

Labour's chief fundraiser Lord Levy has been re-arrested by police looking into cash-for-honours allegations.

He was questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and later bailed."

Bet the farm, Tony!

Iain Macwhirter in the Herald...

New Labour plays the moral bankruptcy card: "It's hard not to conclude that the government itself has become an extension of the multi-billion-pound gambling industry. I know that sounds a little paranoid, but what else are we to conclude? Nothing better illustrates the moral bankruptcy of New Labour.

It seems to want to give as many reasons as possible for people not to vote for it in the May elections. As if Iraq and cash for honours weren't enough, here we have government of the left promoting this evil and insidious form of human exploitation. Well, if it isn't careful, Labour could lose the entire pot."

Collective intelligence

Now, where have I heard that before...

"It's “Incredibly exciting, powerful collective intelligence”."

Nike chief executive Mark Parker
at Davos forum on web 2.0

with YouTube's Chad Hurley; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr; and EU commissioner Viviane Reding.

quoted on BBC NEWS | World Economic Forum 2007:

Celtic Connections, Glasgow, 17 Jan-24 Feb 2007

Published in the Morning Star

(Friday 26 January 2007)

Captivating Celtic

FESTIVAL: Celtic Connections

MALCOLM BURNS tells us who's the cream of the Celtic music crop.

Glasgow's annual Celtic Connections Festival runs until February 4 and features an array of international talent.

This year, new artistic director Donald Shaw has kept the winning formula fresh and successful by combining new blood and old favourites.

Heeliegoleerie, Danny award winners at last year's Celtic Connections Open Stage, are a neat young trio. Fiddler Eilidh Steel composes many of their tunes. Mark Neal plays guitar and cittern and sings and Ali MacLeod beats rhythm on the djembe.

In a neat and friendly touch, aiming at a front room atmosphere, the band present the audience with chocolate digestive biscuits to eat during their set at the Piping Centre on Wednesday.

Their music is polished but far from sterile - a jazzy, syncopated, percussive guitar accompanies several quick medleys of reels. Neal has a faraway look while playing slower numbers such as The Lonely Whaler and also as he accompanies Steel's lyrical fiddle melody in Tune for Keith and Mary, written for a silver wedding.

There's an air of expectancy as guests John Doyle and Anna Massie take the stage. Highly regarded Dublin-born guitarist Doyle has been a star for over a decade, first in top Irish-US band Solas. Doyle's teaming with former Scottish Young Traditional Musician of the Year, multi-instrumentalist Massie, promises much.

Fortunately, the pair wear their virtuosity lightly and weave a captivating sound.

Left-handed Doyle opens on guitar, looking intense, but the music is relaxing. Massie follows him into the tune, initially pensive, her guitar soft.

Doyle moves into a jig and Massie accompanies, now smiling. Then she picks up the lead with him playing hard and fast against her.

Massie plays fiddle as Doyle sings I Know My Love - learned from Cork singer Jimmy Crowley - and he laughs as he falters on the second verse. She continues on the fiddle, leading with a set of marches and jigs to which he adds his trademark rhythm-doubling style and swooping bass harmonies.

"God help us with this one," jokes Doyle as they launch into a fiendishly complex version of O'Carolan's Draught, a breathtaking guitar duet which the pair conclude with a triumphant flourish.

A couple of numbers further and the pair have exhausted their planned set list, but they continue in busking mode, each calling out tunes and keys for the other to follow.

In a final set of tunes, Massie leads with guitar in the air In Dispraise of Whisky.

Wild applause forces an encore and they play a fascinating version of Wild Colonial Boy - not at all the usual pub chant. Doyle jokes: "We'll do whatever. It's a recipe for chaos." But they pull off a brilliant, blinding finale. And they make it sound so easy.

The Celtic Club, held every night during the festival at the city's Holiday Inn, is a hot ticket. For only £3.50 on a week-night, it's surely the best value in town.

Deep in the bowels of the hotel, the club kicks off well after the formal shows at around 11.30pm and the party rolls till the wee small hours.

There's no billing - you could see any of the top acts here, all doing a turn and mixing it up with each other, literally making musical Celtic Connections.

With the bar open until the bitter end, informal music sessions kicking off all around and even a stall selling aromatic curries, the club is the engine room of the festival.

Hosts Gibb Todd and Doris Rougvie sing and introduce the changing acts each night.

US folk singer Jim Page isn't on the official line-up, but plays at the club fresh from an anti-war demo in Edinburgh. He performs his well-known adaptation of Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land as an anti-Bush anthem and Anna Mae, about the murder of Native American movement activist Anne Mae Pictou Aquash in 1976, as well as a version of Talking Glasgow Blues. Page is touring around southern Britain until February 4 and is well worth checking out.

Uncle Earl is an all-female band from the US that plays a compelling brand of downhome old-time pre-bluegrass string band music.

The fiddle, banjo, guitar and mandolin are augmented by a cracking double bass player. In keeping with the connections theme, they get what seems like half the club, all the other performers - among them US banjo legend Bela Fleck - up on stage to join them. The other half are up dancing. If anyone in London fancies a hoedown tonight, they are playing the Spitz in Spitalfields.

Galician band Berroguetto bring a jazzy, sometimes Gypsy, sometimes Arabic feel to the club. The band combines a driving guitar sound, backed with fiddle, accordion and bodhran-like drum, to accompany their charismatic female singer, whose guttural words are reminiscent of Gaelic mouth music. Perhaps another Celtic Connection? Then, the singer takes up her Galician pipes and more dancing ensues.

Next up are the Tim Edey Trio, featuring the breathtaking New Zealand harmonica virtuoso Brendan Power and British bodhran player Lucy Randall. Tim himself is a master of the melodeon, among many instruments, and he regularly plays with Celtic supergroup Session A9, which also features festival artistic director Donald Shaw. Their set features a guest spot by fine Irish singer Brendan Begley.

And so it goes on. The Celtic Club continues in this vein every night during the festival.

When Brian McNeill of Battlefield Band fame introduces Dick Gaughan, who, in turn, introduces Archie Fisher, all in the first half-hour, you cannot deny that you are in the presence of singers of "songs of conscience," which was the name this spectaclar show at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Tuesday.

McNeill and Gaughan even play an "instrumental of conscience," Hamish Henderson's Refusal, named for the late great man's principled rejection of an OBE - and perhaps it is a sly dig at Fisher, who was named MBE this new year.

Even in this exalted company, however, some of the newest and truest songs of conscience come from Dublin singer Mick Hanly.

Highlights are Cold Cold World, about hypocritical neighbours in a winter freeze, and, especially, Shellakabookee Boy, an intensely complex, personal song about his US stepson, who became a marine and took part in the assault on Fallujah in Iraq.

Against such concentrated anguish, Cape Breton singer Gordie Sampson's Nashville excursions sound painfully light.

British socialist singer Roy Bailey injects some more conscience music, including a thoughtful rendition of Leon Rosselson's Palaces of Gold.

Tom Paxton takes the stage saying: "It's nice to be home again. I'm proud of my Scottish roots."

The mix is conscientiously light - a couple of drinking songs, a couple of lullabies written for his daughters over 30 years ago, then Marry Me Again, for his wife - until he stops to consider his start in the folk business, when the record labels told him: "You're not going anywhere, you have no focus, singing children's songs, love songs and those communistic songs."

Tom says: "Well, I think I was going somewhere. I'm here with you now. Anyway, here's a new song. About Iraq."

And he launches into an anti-war anthem: "Some might call it folly. Some might call it self-defence. Some might take it further. But today, sad to say, I call it murder."

Then, the rest all join Paxton onstage, apart from Gaughan, who's nipped off to another gig. As the whole company finish with a run through The Last Thing on My Mind, The Broom O'The Cowdenknowes and Ramblin' Boy, it all feels like a rather grand old folk club.

And there's more. The festival continues with dozens of gigs plus workshops and more right up to Sunday February 4. Take a look at the box on the left for highlights.

And there's more

Here are some picks from the rest of Celtic Connections.

SATURDAY
Lisa Knapp and Maeve Mackinnon
2pm at the Piping Centre
Maeve is not only a rising young Gaelic singer, but her political family background means she's a Morning Star supporter too.

SUNDAY JANUARY 28
Songs of Conscience with Odetta and Thea Gilmore
7.30pm at the Royal Concert Hall
An all-female bill supporting a folk legend in a second show under this banner.

Young Traditional Musician of the Year Final 2007
5pm at City Halls
Six fine young musicians bid for this very prestigious award.

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 2
Rosanne Cash
7.30pm at the Royal Concert Hall
Daughter of Johnny and a star in her own right.

Back of the Moon /D'imh/Buille
8pm at the Royal Concert Hall
A powerful triple bill.

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 4
Kathleen MacInnes
8pm at the Piping Centre
A beautiful Gaelic voice.

ON EVERY DAY
Danny Kyle's Open Stage
5pm at the Royal Concert Hall
Named in memory of a favourite Scottish folk proselytiser, this free daily show is your chance to catch tomorrow's stars today as up-and-coming acts compete for a coveted Danny award and a support slot on next year's festival.

Unfortunately, some other highlights, such as John Martyn's performance of his classic album Solid Air on Monday January 29 and The Peatbog Faeries gig on Friday February 2, have sold out well in advance.

Box office: (0141) 353-8000.

WEB LINK:
www.celticconnections.com

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