Bob-a-job

I heard today that my company is merging with another. It’s been one of the worst kept secrets in history, with many of us knowing all but the technicalities, over a month ago. This ‘news’ was delivered with the usual management psychobabble, with lots of talk of efficiencies and synergies, which, as everyone knows, usually mean redundancies. Nothing concrete as yet, but in previous mergers comrades did fall.

I guess I need to get stuck into that novel and get it finished. Anyway, if anyone out there needs a political/technology/sports/culture (or anything really) writer, you know where I am. Take a look around the blog and see what you think.

aaronsheath[at]gmail.com

On a lighter note, tonight I’m going to watch Notts take on Yorkshire in Cricket’s Twenty20 Cup at Trent Bridge. Glorious day too.

Heartland Heartbreak

Labour has lost an election in its former Welsh stronghold, Blaenau Gwent, twice in little over a year. In what Hazel Blears has excused as a “unique set of circumstances,” the Independent Dai Davis, last night beat the Labour candidate Owen Smith by a margin of 2,500 votes.

This defeat will further unsettle nervous Labour backbenchers who suspect that the party’s unpopularity, will most likely manifest itself with them being thrust into unemployment at the next General Election. Calls for regicide, with Blair’s head served on a platter (probably with radishes, and a side order of John Reid), will no doubt give the parliamentary sketch writers something to rant about in the tree-based-media this weekend.

Blears, however, is probably right. This defeat may well be a “unique set of circumstances,” after all, didn’t Labour win a General Election just 13-months ago? It seems so long ago, yet I’m sure I remember Blair delivering yet another bloody nose to the Tories. Maybe it was a dream? Blears et al, if they don’t want that dream to become a nightmare, would be wise to ensure these “unique set of circumstances” do not become “unique” to the rest of the British Isles.

The election victory last year may well be a faint memory, but the past 12-months of scandal and ineptitude, which have already defined this third-term, have had a stark impact in the polls, with Dave “tPod” Cameron, outflanking Mr. Blair.

Opinion polls are notoriously misleading however, just ask Neil Kinnock. In fact, in another by-election last night, in the “safe” South East England seat of Bromley and Chislehurst, where the Tories enjoyed a majority of 13,342, Cameron’s party saw a humiliating fall from grace, as their candidate limped over the line after a traditional Lib Dem by-election assault. With a majority of just 633, new Conservative MP Bob Neill, a former member of the London Assembly, will take the seat of former Tory Hero, the late great Eric Forth.

The ferocity, and suggested dastardliness, of the Lib Dem challenge has had Tory bloggers jumping about like rabid dogs, and the victorious Neill himself, declared their conduct as the “most vigorous and underhand example of cynical personal abuse” he had encountered.

So with Cameron trying to reconcile his promising opinion poll results with yet another electoral kick in the ghoolies, and Labour nursing yet another haemorrhage in its heartlands, next weeks PMQ’s are shaping up to be a stonking good watch.

snowflake5

Already a great blog?

Well snowflake is already making me question cancelling my Labour Party membership.

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Football T’s

I had sooo much fun with this Guardian site, where you can build-your-own World Cup t-shirt. [link]

More on Murdoch

Peter Wilby takes Murdoch to task here on CiF.

Murdoch ♥ Cameron

Rupert Murdoch’s support for the New Labour project may well be on the wane following the rise in popularity of David Cameron. Always one to back a potential winner, Murdoch clearly sees the vacuous Eton-educated Tory leader as the man to better further his agenda. [The Guardian]

Other than finding out the Number Ten tea lady is an Al-Qaida supporting asylum seeker, it’s hard to imagine worse news for the increasingly media-obsessed cabinet.

The Chancellor (he’s the sweaty one with the false smile) will be increasingly frustrated that a key pillar of the New Labour strategy, the support of Murdoch’s News International, can no longer be relied upon in any future election.

News International’s tabloid newspaper, The Sun, is widely credited with delivering a substantial voting block in any General Election.

Murdoch revealed this revelation in an interview with his own newspaper, The Australian. In the text, the Aussie-born Billionaire highlights his widely known disdain for the European Union, and guardedly chastises Tony Blair for his position on the subject. However, only a moron would expect Mr. Brown to actually pull-out of the EU, so one can expect an increasingly critical tone from The Sun and probably The Times.

Why not take a look at the Mr. News Internationals assets, here, they’ll certainly highlight why he’s so ‘Euroskeptic.’

Murdoch is of course an American citizen and a staunch supporter of Bush and Blair’s war in Iraq. Murdoch’s Fox News network is also the chief cheerleader for Bush’s Republican Party, regularly ignoring new stories that put the GOP in a bad light, and hiring low-level, fully lobotomised, leaflet-holding party drones to represent the Democrats in live debates.

It’s only a matter of time before Brown panics and declares a quiet contempt for Brussels (while doing and promising a big-fat nothing), in a vain attempt to curry favour with the war-loving media mogul. For if we have learnt anything from the last eighteen months, let it be, that we know Brown is little more than a vacant and ideologically bankrupt coward.

(Thanks to Richard W. Symonds for the tip.)

Another Football Funny

Another rehashed joke tailored for the World Cup… Read the rest of this entry »

Isreal turns the screw in Gaza

With an Israeli hostage hidden somewhere in the Gaza strip, IDF tanks crossing the boarder, and Syria opening fire on Israeli fighter planes, the Middle East looks as unstable as ever.

From the BBC:

Cpl Gilad Shalit was seized by Palestinian militants in an attack on an Israeli border post on Sunday, that also left two Israeli soldiers dead.

Israel has threatened a huge military response if Cpl Shalit is not released and has been massing its tanks along the border with Gaza.

Separately, Palestinian militants in the West Bank have killed an Israeli settler they said they had abducted at the weekend

Also: Hamas resists Israel recognition [link]

So much for the invasion of Iraq bringing about “peace and democracy” in the Middle East…

Make Poverty (promises) History

2005 was Make Poverty History year. Remember?

Come on, surely you remember all the white wristbands, news reports, and self-serving pop stars? What about all those politicians having a fancy banquet in Gleneagles… you must remember?

Ok, ok, let me refresh your memory. The day before the G8 meeting opened I said [link]:

Blair must be honest with the world and concede that the ills of the world will not be addressed by this weeks G8 meeting. The G8 communiqué has no binding powers and recent promises to end poverty by 2015 will not be met. The G8 has no headquarters and no secretariat, and is for all intensive purposes a talking shop.

Just a warning: Expect to see a lot of hot air and little delivery.

EarthPal, as ever, brings you up-to-date in a great post, here.

Bye bye Spain [tyger weeps]

As an adopted Spaniard (in that I had Spain in the office sweepstake), I was devastated by Spain’s unlucky defeat in last nights second round clash [link], at the hands of the dastardly French.

The Spanish just ran out of ideas, and the French, with their unenlightened yet technical football, were always going to remain a threat in the late stages.

Maybe this World Cup has come too early for Torres, Villa, and Fàbregas et al?

Parlamentskaya Gazeta editor ‘resigns’

More evidence of a Duma crackdown on the free press?

Last week, speaker of the Federation Council upper house, Sergei Mironov demanded that the editor-in-chief of Parlamentskaya Gazeta be fired. On June 22, which is marked as Day of Remembrance and Sorrow in Russia, the newspaper carried an article titled “Lokotskaya Alternative” which justified actions by accomplices of the Nazis in the territory of the Bryansk region during World War II.

Calling the fact of the publication “ignominious and mean,” Mironov said he had suggested to Gryzlov that the editor-in-chief be fired. The upper house backed their speaker.

[link]

Superman Returns on Slate

The verdict?

I know melancholic superheroes are all the rage at the box office these days, but thwarted love, painful as it may be, hardly seems commensurate with this endless mopey floating.

Was Superman a Smiths fan?

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Soweto on film

Very humid here today. England is horrible when there is cloud cover, heat, and high pressure. Still, a life in England is infinitely preferable to that of millions of Africans, as photographer David Levene portrays in this brilliant reel.

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Joke: Dubya’s woes

An oldie… Read the rest of this entry »

Feminism in the noughties: “Dirty young men”

Janice Turner on the sexualisation of women in ‘lads mags’, from Saturday’s last year’s Guardian Weekend supplement [link]:

Once porn and real human sexuality were distinguishable. Not even porn’s biggest advocates would suggest a porn flick depicted reality, that women were gagging for sex 24/7 and would drop their clothes and submit to rough, anonymous sex at the slightest invitation. But as porn has seeped into mainstream culture, the line has blurred. To speak to men’s magazine editors, it is clear they believe that somehow in recent years, porn has come true. The sexually liberated modern woman turns out to resemble - what do you know! - the pneumatic, take-me-now-big-boy fuck-puppet of male fantasy after all.