Author Archive for Peter Archive Page 8
Blair unveils his ‘respect’ plans: “People could be evicted from their own homes if they cause a nuisance under a new ‘respect’ action plan.”
And the next thing is the Ermächtigungsgesetz. Don’t forget: Britain never experienced a nationalist, socialist-branded government — yet.
(Via BBC News.)
But how will these “national standards” and the striking idea of “cultural entitlements” affect the arts via the funding mechanisms?
My second worst fears are that a Scottish-made micky mouse canon of “what arts is” will emerge — driven by the quest for “national standards” aka lowest common denominator and the idea of being able to consume “culture” (i.e. cultural entitlement) representing a new breed of “human rights” which all help people being “normal”, average, main-stream, middle class, sub-urban watchers of national TV programmes, members in charitable societies, attending performances and exhibition sponsored by the (ruling) corporations of New Scottland plc., all inline with marginalising the right of free speak as measure agains terrorism etc.
Let me just expand on the “cultural entitlements”. I am a strong believer in the free movement of people — you should be allowed to settle wherever you choose to. So if you choose to live on the Outer Hebridies that’s your choice … however that includes no National Ballet and no Edinburgh Festival on your doorstep. Equally if you live in Inverurie you don’t get the Dundee Rep, you don’t get the Tramway in Edinburgh, and if you live on Orkney you don’t get Aberdonian taxi drivers. But what now with “cultural entitlements”? Would you be entitled to get your Dundee Rep, Tramway and Aberdonian taxi driver delivered to your doorstep … certainly not. What you will be entitled to will most probably be culture according to “national standards” — maybe a bus tour to the closest performance of the Scottish National Orchestra (the unavoidable 15 must-have-heard pieces…) and the local museum praising the good ol’ times.
My worst fears actually are that this vision of a centrally controlled creative “industry” will become reality in Scotland as of 2007. Your £2om-a-year will quickly be burnt for such UNcreative exercises , and so will the critical cultural substrate sustainably be starving; all for the sake of a “flourishing” and “ambitious” cultural Scotland.
(By the way: have you noticed how flourishing and ambicious have replaced vibrant as the most abused adjectives…)
Anger as 7 July inquiry rejected: “The government’s decision not to hold a public inquiry into the 7 July London bombings is strongly criticised.”
And we are left to wonder what the British government might have to hide…
(Via BBC News.)
“We define terrorism, and its precondition subversion, with care. It should be confined to those who use terror and violence or the threat of them to achieve their political objectives.” says Professor Anthony “Total” Glees in a Times Higher article. He then goes on: “universities can be recruiting grounds for those who wish to destroy parliamentary liberal democracy” — but obviously his careful definition excludes himself — a know “liberal” thinker i.e. in support of a totalitarian approach to censor Britain’s academia, as earlier articles showed (and I had myself a lengthy email discussion after accusing him exactly of that). Anthony Glees is professor of politics at Brunel University’s Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies. There is this funny use of “Intelligence” again …
MET paid for flights & accommodation for the bereaved de Menezes family to visit England … in a vain attempt to bribe them to swallow the MET’s murder of their son. But Maria de Menezes quite rightly said: “Those who killed my son, as much as the police chief who is responsible for the whole team, should be punished. They wanted to kill him. They were assassins, they were murderers. They killed him and I am disgusted.”
In a decent country the chief murderer would have resigned long ago — but this does not happen in racist Britain — of course!
I tried to phone a guy at a certain Scottish City Council (no names, no places …). Obviously he was not there, so I got through to the council’s voice mail system: “Welcome to (name withheld) City Council’s voice mail system. If you want to retrieve your messages, please put in your ID. If you want to leave a message, please put in the extension number…”
It is obviously essential that council staff can do their work efficiently. Whether I can reach the person I need to speak to seems far less important.
Today I tried to translate “Rücknahmeverpflichtung” into English. Essentially R. means that producers of harmful goods (e.g. computers) are required to dispose of their products once the consumers don’t use them any more. Babelfish at altavista came up with “cancelling obligation” and dict.leo.org suggested “obligation to take back”. Luckily I remembered (with some support of eu.int) that there is an EU Directive, number 2002/96/EG, that deals with the subject.
Googling for 2002/96/EG should be easy enough to bring up a plethora of hits in English — I thought. But Google taught me otherwise. You can get 2002/96/EG in German, in Dutch, in Swedish, even in Polish, but to find a first hit in English took a lot of scrolling …
This, so it seems, is another element of Britain 2005ff. Let the others sort their rubbish — we British are rubbish anyway, so it does not matter, does it, whether we sort or recycle or just dump. It’s more important to remove these people from our shores who would not want to live in and as rubbish.
Oh, by the way, I still don’t know what “Rücknahmeverpflichtung” means in English…
Men are more intelligent than women, particularly if they are called Richard Lynn and emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University. And if they are white, since Richard Lynn chose to “prove” that white people are more intelligent than black people already a while ago. And his ridiculous claims are seconded by so far innocent Paul Irwing, senior lecturer in psychology at Manchester University.
This is certainly good news for Tony Blair and his totalitarian supporters. Or don’t you remember “scientists” in the 1930ies proving that the race of “Homo sapiens” emerged from natural selection and that it would quite be O.K. to support that selection actively (see also New Scientist, 20 Aug 05, pp. 34ff).
So there comes another building block for Britain 2005ff. freely delivered to your doorstep. Wait and see to what higher purpose they could put academia … just think of the animal testing laboratories, e.g.
Britain ‘needs stronger identity’: “Britain needs a stronger sense of national identity, Conservative leader Michael Howard tells the BBC.”
And indeed the Metropolitan Police is already working hard on building that new national identity: the kill-to-shoot-to-get-rid-of-innocent-people-policy. Leaked documents prove once more that Jean Charles de Menezes had turned from innocent to suicide-bomber in the blood-thirsty, gun-hungry minds of the “Metropolitan Police SO19 tactical firearms unit”.
The new national identity is therefore “code red” — shoot anybody you’d like to shoot, particularly if they are innocent. If shooting is not appropriate, deport them to countries where they are likely to be tortured.
If somebody sadly cannot be shot or deported because they are not sufficiently innocent, lock them up in detention centres (and of course give these centres a nice name) or in 24/7-surveilled gated communities. Tag everybody with an RFID-chip and track their movements wherever they go and whatever they do. Ideally develop and implement into every UK resident brain-tracker chips that monitor brain activity and report anything that is abnormal (i.e. not watching pay TV) to the respective SO19 unit to trigger code red, i.e. immediate terminal shooting.
It all has been described earlier and much more eloquently … by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. All that needs to be done is combining the best of both worlds into a strong, new, national, totalitarian identity: Britain 2005ff.
(Via BBC News.)
Muslims ‘right about decadent UK’: “Muslims who criticise ‘decadent Britain’ are right, say a group of newly-elected Tory MPs.”
However, they go on blaming ‘”woolly-minded” liberal thinking for society’s sliding values.
I would argue that decadence is an integral if not fundamental concept of Tory politics. cf. the statue of Mrs. Thatcher, for example. And the liberals, certainly, are not any better, nor is NewLabour… Where is space for intelligent debate? In the casino. Where is space for alternative concepts of society? In CCTV-mind-controlling UK.
Just – bombing it out is not a solution either.
(Via BBC News.)
According to BBC NEWS: A certain Mr Davis (believed to be a Tory hawk or something) said ministers should review the Human rights Act ‘advocating its repeal if necessary’. And anybody who does not have “respect for the British way of life” (namely: there is no such thing as human rights, we love 24 hour surveillance, random shooting of innocent strengthens society) should leave the country (ideally as long as borders are still “porous”).
OK, bye now and count me out … that’s me gone!
“SCOTLAND’S senior police officers are looking to increase the number of armed officers north of the Border in direct response to the threat posed by al-Qaeda terrorists, The Scotsman has learned.”
(The Scotsman.)