I’ve been tagged by the geekalicious Political Penguin to write about my cell in exactly 139-words.
So here goes…
Yeah, I use a BlackBerry.
I’m one of those people.
It’s only my second BlackBerry, I had the 8800, but my new Curve is much better.
No it’s not 3G, and that’s an issue on the move — but it does have a full keyboard, WiFi, video, 3.2MPxl camera, and launches and runs apps quickly.
Obviously a BlackBerry’s USP is its handling of email. This is truly peerless. And as I was using my Nokia N95’s 3G connection mainly for email, I don’t really miss the faster net access.
The thing that has impressed me most is the apps. The ÜberTwitter and facebook apps are awesome, and fully integrate with the BlackBerry’s brilliant OS. If Vodafone had the iPhone, I’d probably have that, but as a second choice, the 8900 has proven to be capable, well-designed, and powerful.
There. Pithy? I think so. I’ve utterly sold the phone short — but 139-words are the rules.
I can’t help but wince when people claim that the result was fraudulent. We don’t know that. We suspect it, but we don’t know it.
The western press, as we know, polled the urban young. Many warned, prior to the election, that non-urban areas are far more conservative and that there Ahmedinijad is very well liked.
It’s apparent that some intimidation occurred, and the election result is questionable, but we should be careful about being so certain that any foreign election we don’t like is rigged.
And - this folks is the huge elephant in the room - it’s highly unlikely that the installation of Moussavi would lead to the rapid liberalisation of Iranian society.
That said… Sunny is dead-right. Conservatives demanding action are dead-wrong.
Know-nothing Republican senators and vacuous Tory blowhards should keep their traps shut. What would a “strong statement” actually achieve, apart from justifying the Iranian establishment’s claims of foreign chicanery?
If we can help the Iranian progressives logistically, we should. But help should come from western citizens, not moronic conservative politicians trying to score political points.
Iran is at a crossroads. We should allow the people of Iran to determine their own destiny.
And so finally, fascist flabby arse-wipe Nick Griffin has achieved national political legitimacy by winning a seat at the European Parliament.
And guess what?
We put him there. The progressives. Or so-called progressives, anyway.
The New Labour project, that brave centre-left experiment to bring Clintonian Third-Way politics to a post-Thatcherite Britain, is over.
Yeah, Slippery Dave promises us pragmatic politics without “isms”, but we know that’s a crock to triangulate the Tories for the maximum haul of MPs at the next general election. Cameron will use his majority to remind us what a bunch of twat-necks the Tories are, and always have been.
I’m not a socialist. I’m a centre-left liberal. I believe in robust markets and social liberalism. Labour’s failure is not its adoption of Ordoliberalism, but its failure to deliver it.
The State has spent millions on management consultants, yet it has been proven incompetent at improving systems and controlling costs — two pillars of good management.
Look at the colossal clusterfuck that is tax-credits. Hard working families have found themselves repaying thousands back, because the system is convoluted, over-complicated and utterly mismanaged. Brown’s gargantuan tax-system is an operational catastrophe that has ultimately failed the working poor.
Then there is Labour’s abject failure to communicate to the working classes. New Labour’s kowtowing to the Murdoch press and its rabid commitment to spinning a narrative to the bloated middle classes, have ensured it no longer speaks directly to the poor and disenfranchised. Whenever a section of society is ignored and marginalised, the predatory fascist right move in to fill the vacuum. I predicted this years ago, as did many writers and commentators.
The final nail was the expenses scandal, which was a plague on all their houses. But it was Labour, with its huge majorities, which could have reformed the system — had they not been abusing it like alcoholics at a free-bar.
Our politics is broken, but the Labour Party is shattered. It’s on life-support and few people actually want to see it pull-through. If we forget tribalism for a second, wouldn’t the progressive cause actually be helped by the quick suffocation of The Labour Party?
We need to reclaim the conversation from the far-right. We need to address, both rhetorically and practically, the concerns of the working poor.
Progressive politics must have a carnival of ideas. We need to experiment with proven policies that have been successful across Europe and the world, and we must remain focussed on efficiency and delivery. These are lean times, but it doesn’t mean we can’t work towards better times.
Labour will lose the next general election, but it lost a commitment to progressive politics a long time ago.
You’ve probably heard all about Sonia Sotomayor by now. She’s the Bronx-rasied hispanic judge who Obama has nominated as his first appointee to the Supreme Court.
If like me you first read about her in The New York Times, you may also know that — from the comments posted there by liberal readers — the left aren’t particularly taken with her. The grassroots left, whose activism had propelled the young Chicagoan outsider to the presidency, were hoping for a nominee who would be guaranteed to further their cause (not to mention piss off the GOP).
Sotomayor isn’t an activist judge. She’s a champion of judicial process. To the polarised partisan her judgements might appear ambiguous (and so could be “shaped” to fit any desired narrative), but this is because they’re nuanced. A judge shouldn’t seek to push an agenda.
This doesn’t mean Sotomayor won’t be a liberal judge. No one is completely objective (even if, invariably, prejudiced myopia is a conservative trait). But it may mean that she will be a floating vote on close judgements. And surely, this is what we should really expect from Obama. He’s never claimed to be an activist liberal, he has always championed merit, fairness and common-sense.
To me Sotomayor is the perfect Obama choice. She has risen from humble origins to the brink of the highest court in The United States. She is smart — she graduated second in her Princeton class, and was an editor of the school’s law review. And Sotomayor appears to put reason and pragmatism ahead of culture-war politics.
Of course just because Sotomayor isn’t a rabid baby-eating liberal, it doesn’t mean that the Republicans will accept her with fair-minded acquiescence. In reality, the GOP is probably livid that they don’t have an activist judge they can easily paint as a “jackbooted feminazi”.
The Republican Party is in complete disarray. Rovian conservatism is built on the politicisation of religion. The GOP needs a Supreme Court fight to energise and unite its base — not to mention invigorate its fund-raising efforts.
The right thing for the Republicans to do would be to take the high-ground and embrace the new political atmosphere. Obama could have nominated a much more threatening judge (or Democrat politician) to the SCOTUS. He didn’t. But to a desperate GOP a fight’s a fight, and boy do they want a fight.
I suppose I shouldn’t write this. And I certainly wont be linking to the post that prompted this — after all, the blogger in question is someone I admire and someone I don’t (and this is a first for me) want to offend.
But, seriously, why blog if you’re just going to post noise?
Why blog if what you write is just pointless drivel? Even if it’s witty and concise, what’s the point of taking time out of your day to write the sort of rat-spit that makes people mutter “huh” or “heh”?
Isn’t there enough noise in the blogosphere and on the internet in general?
That’s what twitter is for: the idle, inane mutterings not worthy of a considered 200-word blogpost.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done it. In the past I blogged regularly. Two or three times a day at the height of my “powers”. But then I decided that my time is worth more than nothing. I blog when there is something I really want to say. I’m not beholden to some idea of daily blogging. In these days of RSS and group-blogs, is there really any room for the pointless daily crowing of the bedroom-bound blogger?
Everyone deserves a voice. This is a not a rant about quality. If you want to blog every day that’s fine. It’s your life and your time. But don’t be deluded into thinking that, just because you post every 6-hours, that people are going to give a smelly wet turd as to what you have to say. Chances are they don’t.
This is not the era of rampant bloggery. Now everyone, from the most respected commentator to the funniest comedian, blogs. If you have a post that really rocks, it will - if you alert the editors of larger blogs - be registered. It will gain traction, but don’t think that you will pierce the upper echelons of the UK’s blogosphere by following it up with random rants that offer no new insight.
Cream will rise. If you’re a great writer with something exceptional to say, you will be recognised. Blogging, unlike the MSM, is not a closed shop. But if you write a post that says nothing new — no matter how many swear-words you use — people will ignore it.
My advice is that you blog when you can’t not blog. When you have an itch so irritable it must be scratched, you fire-up your computer and you rant away. But please, if you value your time, don’t just blog for the sake of it. People simply will not care.
It appears that the video has become a hit in America’s classrooms, where teachers are using it to convey the basic law of economics: that finite resources are just that, finite. And that our rabid consumerism is accelerating the use of our planets limited resources.
Watch it here. Really, you should. It’s excellent.
I’m sorry, but… I’m not interested in politicians cleaning up their act.
I want them to be held accountable - as criminals, where necessary. If the general public dodge tax, or try to fiddle benefits, they get hammered (this government even screened ads demanding we turn each other in, if we suspect wrongdoing).
And please, don’t allow them to hide behind technicalities. These are our elected leaders. They, supposedly, serve at our pleasure.
Why should politicians be allowed to say sorry, promise to do better, and keep their ill-gotten loot? If they do, why shouldn’t future politicians not be allowed to wet their beak? No, no, NO! Every claim that can’t be justified as wholly legitimate should be paid back. I don’t give a runny shit whether it costs £10m to investigate and claim back £500,000 - I WANT IT BACK.
Why are they so special, and why are their proposals so clearly designed to allow much of this to continue?
It’s not just Labour. Our politics - all of it - is broken.
Tim’s latest video, ripping the absolute piss out of sock-puppeting hack Andrew Gilligan, is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Genuinely laugh out loud.
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