The Ministry Of Truth

Fucking Hell.

Drunken revellers will probably notice no difference during tomorrow’s new year celebrations, but thanks to the Earth’s erratic rotation they will have fractionally longer to enjoy the moment and perhaps linger over that celebratory midnight kiss.

British physicists and official timekeepers around the world will insert an extra second or “leap second” into the new year countdown to bring the most accurate atomic clocks in line with the astronomical day.

“The difference between atomic time and Earth time has now built up to the point where it needs to be corrected, so this New Year’s Eve we will experience a rare 61-second minute at the very end of 2008 and revellers all over the UK will have an extra second to celebrate,” said Peter Whibberley, a senior research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington who is helping to coordinate the time update.

2008 has been a crock of shit.

Why can’t they add the extra second to the start of 2009 so we can all enjoy it properly…?

Unbelievable.

{Programme Name:}   Sarah Kennedy
{Transmission Date:}  19 - 11 - 08

{Comments:}
At around 7.10am on 19 November, Sarah Kennedy wondered how, given that ’so many Muslims are called Mohammed’, teachers could differentiate between them in class.  Mohammed is indeed a fairly common Muslim name, but Sarah is a fairly common English name - indeed, I was once in a class with two Sarahs.  My teacher then differentiated between them by calling them ‘Sarah A’ and ‘Sarah M’, cunningly using the first letter of their surnames.  Why would or should this be any different with Muslims or children called Mohammed?  Does Ms. Kennedy consider Muslims to be special cases in some way?  I consider Ms. Kennedy’s singling out of Muslims in this manner to be - at best - passively racist.

Ms. Kennedy has form in this area and regularly comes out with ‘ambiguous’ statements that are open to misinterpretation: indeed, just a few moments before this comment Ms. Kennedy needlessly announced a record by Tanita Tikaram (born in Germany, grew up in Basingstoke) in the sort of mock Indian accent that I thought had died with Peter Sellars.

Given the new puritanism currently sweeping the BBC (and Radio 2 in particular) please can the BBC explain why this sort of output is considered appropriate?

Regards,

[The Minister]

From:  reception@bbc.co.uk
To:    [The Minister]
Date:  Sat, 27 Dec 2008 5:54 PM

Dear [Minister]

Thanks for your e-mail regarding the ‘Sarah Kennedy’ programme.

Firstly, I should apologise for the delay in getting back to you. We realise that our correspondents appreciate a quick response and I’m therefore sorry that you’ve had to wait on this occasion.

I understand that you were offended by comments made by Sarah during the programme concerning children with the name Mohammed. I note that your concerns lie with her comments as to how teachers would differentiate between the many children with this name and that you feel that Muslim children were being singled out in this instance.

The editor responsible for this show passes on the programme’s apologies for any offence caused. He has also spoken to Sarah about this.

I can assure you that your complaint has been registered on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that’s circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your feedback.

Regards

[name removed to protect the innocent]
BBC Complaints
____________________________
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

Stop the presses, we’ve a late entry for Cultural Nadir.

A woman has left her job!

She must be a very important woman in a very important job because Arrivederci Gordon and Posh Boy Dave both deemed the event important enough to record farewell messages for her.

Arrivederci Gordon opined: “Congratulations on the support that you’ve won throughout the country.”

PBD said: “The sofa will never be the same without you.”

Support throughout the country?  A departure that means the end of comfy chairs as we know them?

Who can this be?  A senior Ikea designer?

Oh, it’s Fiona Phillips from GMTV.

So the voluntary departure of an overpaid woman barely anybody knows from a programme barely anybody watches (1.1 million viewers each day is not exactly up there with The Morecambe & Wise Christmas Show 1977 is it?) is deemed worthy of political comment.

Our economy is in meltdown; our armed forces are engaged in the illegal occupation of another sovereign state; and the planet is melting.  Yet our “leaders” (sic) have got enough time to tit around like this.

It’s your vote in 2009: cast it wisely.

For the first time in ages, I think I’m speechless.

The outgoing US vice-president, Dick Cheney, last night gave an unapologetic assessment of his eight years in office, defending the invasion of Iraq, the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, secret wiretapping and the extreme interrogation method known as waterboarding.

In his first television interview since the presidential election in November, Cheney displayed no regrets and gave no ground to his many critics within America and around the world. He summed up his record by saying: “I think, given the circumstances we’ve had to deal with, we’ve done pretty well.”

The last time I saw chutzpah like this, Liberace was still alive.

I know I’m a light-year-and-a-half behind everyone else, but I actually watched an episode/edition/broadcast of The X Factor – the final, in fact – for the first time last weekend.

It’s made me fear for the future of Britain and convinced me absolutely that Simon Cowell is Satan.

I saw Peter Kay’s recent parody and assumed it had amplified and magnified everything but, if anything, what I saw last Saturday suggested that Kay had actually underplayed the original’s ludicrous pomposity and emotional blackmail.

As with Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin, the parody was all the more forensically cruel because it used the very lingua franca of its target: indeed the word “journey” should now be expunged from the Oxford English Dictionary, having been bsatardised out of all recognition by programmes like this and presenters like Dermot O’Leary.  (Oh, Dermot: you showed such promise once.  Is being Cowell’s shill really worth such self-debasement?)

Why do people lap this shit up?  It’s manipulative, the sob stories are almost certainly embellished and everything about the production is just naff.

I don’t deny that the lass who won can sing a bit, though she’s Fourth Division rather than European Cup.

I certainly don’t deny that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is an excellent song - it’s one of the five best pop songs written in the Eighties.

I do, however, believe that Alexandra Burke and Hallelujah make about as easy bedfellows as Dick Cheney and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

Let’s consider Ms. Burke’s interpretation of the lyrics in the song’s first verse:

I heard there was a secret chord…
It goes like this -
The fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall
And the major lift…

As every woman entering The X Factor competition must do, Ms. Burke asks herself: “What Would Mariah Do?”

Mariah, being as thick as mince, would recognise the words “fourth”, “fifth”, “fall” and “lift”.  So if she screeched “fourth” she would display four fingers.  If she yelled “fifth” she would add an extra digit.  For “fall” she would point down towards the ground.  For “lift” she would reach for the sky.

Needless to say, Alexandra Did Exactly What Mariah Would Do For That Is What Satan Decreed.

On witnessing this debacle, anybody remotely familiar with either John Cale’s or Jeff Buckley’s versions of this beautiful and frail little song must have cringed as I did.

On seeing the white-clad gospel choir then stroll onstage they must have started chewing their cushion along with me.

(Satan thinks: “The word “Hallelujah” appears in the Bible and gospel choirs sing religious music therefore we must have a gospel choir on a song called Hallelujah.”  Never knowingly understated.)

Cue a crashing I Will Always Love You-esque snare drum and a thousand layers of syrup for a big finale - shouty lead vocals, synthesised strings, gospel choir, gloop, gloop, gloop, repeat to fade.

To quote Alan Connor:

The final chorus is more like Handel’s original Hallelujah Chorus mashed up with Cher’s I Found Someone.

I agree with Connor - the saving grace is that the quarter of a million quid about to hit Cohen’s bank account is hugely deserved.  The shame is that Laughing Len’s so broke that he’s had to allow a delicate concoction that took him a year to create so painstakingly to be slaughtered on the altar of Satan.

I’ve done all I can: I spent £15.80 downloading Buckley’s Hallelujah from iTunes 20 times last night in an attempt to get something - ANYTHING - else to the top of the chart for Christmas.

If the ITV masses prefer Burke and Satan’s overproduced, overinflated bobbins, well: fuck you.

Today, the Cameron Experiment ended.

For three years, in a haphazard and incosistent manner, PBD’s been trying to convince us that his NuTories were different from the rabid right-wing Conservative options served up at the 2001 and 2005 General Elections.

Until today PBD’s NuTories - if you’ve believed the hype - have been green, caring, touchy, feely, concerned about “society” (which therefore may actually exist after all) and generally bloody good chaps.

Today, with PBD’s poll lead all but wiped out and - unbelievably - no evidence of anybody having the cojones to put Arrivederci Gordon out of his misery, NuTories became SameOldTories.

Today, PBD stood in front of a bunch of economic wonks and did a Geoffrey Howe:

The first step is to set realistic targets for public spending.

It’s simple. Borrowing is now going beyond acceptable limits. Taxes are already too high – and Labour’s plans for even more taxes will act as a drag anchor on recovery. They’ll put people off from investing here and help to destroy jobs not create them.

So the choice is clear, and it’s a tough one – we need to restrain public spending…

So I can announce today that in order to keep spending at a responsible level and to ensure the quickest possible end to the recession and the strongest possible recovery, we will not match Labour’s new spending plans for 2010 and beyond…

But setting tough targets for public spending is only the first step.

The next step is showing how we will meet those targets and that requires a credible long-term plan. A credible long-term plan for controlling public spending has three components.

First, reducing the demands on the state by fixing our broken society.

Second, increasing the productivity of the state by reforming our public services.

And third cutting Government waste.

Even the Economics Editor of The Daily Telegraph can’t hide his opprobrium.

It was the 31st President of the Untied States of Yankee Doodle, Herbert Hoover, who first fucked up a modern recession when he raised taxes and cut spending with the Revenue Act of 1932 in response to the recession that folllowed the 1929 stock market crash.  This led to a decade-long global slump called the Great Depression which saw American unemployment rates hit 25% and was only truly reversed by a worldwide war.

Forty years of economic orthodoxy followed - the way to handle a recession is to borrow a bit more, spend a bit more and cut taxes a bit.  That way a recession does not become a depression.

Fuck that, thought That Bloody Woman, as she sent Geoffrey Howe in to bat in 1981 with instructions - despite double-digit inflation, spiralling unemployment and plummeting economic output - to slash the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement.

The ever-affable Howe duly obliged - spanking the poor bastards already struggling to pay their rent with a freeze on income tax personal allowances (at a time of 13% inflation), increases in VAT and excise duties and big public expenditure cuts.

Jim Prior got a bit huffy but wasn’t pissed off enough actually to be arsed enough to resign from the Cabinet.  A couple of Tory MPs joined the SDP.

364 economists wrote to The Times to point out that this was, er, fucking stupid and that it would make the recession become a depression.  364 economists were told to fuck off because That Bloody Woman knew best.

Cue panic on the streets of London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol and pretty much everywhere else; more than 3½ million unemployed; the systematic destruction of British manufacturing.

That depression lasted five years.

And most people with half-an-inch of brain now accept that Howe probably did go a bit over the top.

Stephen Nickell, now a member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, still thinks that the budget was over the top, and that it did deepen the recession, because unemployment continued to rise for several years afterwards.

So, having no concept of history or ability to learn from past mistakes, PBD has now abandoned all pretence of seeking to reposition the Conservative Party and decided that he’s going to repeat the mistakes of Hoover, Hilda and Howe.

He’s not going to cut taxes, he’s going to cut public spending and he’s going to shrink the state.  In the middle of a recession.

It didn’t work last time.

It won’t work this time.

But at least we’ve now learnt PBD’s true colours.  After three years the mask has come off.

Vote PBD, get more Thatcherism.

Arrivederci Gordon’s Christmas has come early.

But the rest of us should be working out if we’ve got enough points to be able to emigrate to Australasia…

A Chancer is forced to resign in disgrace following the discovery of financial and regulatory irregularities.

And goodness gracious me, who do we have here floating around the edges of the latest Chancerism controversy?

Disgraced Chancer David Ross and his former girlfriend
Shelley Ross with Dave and Smanfer Cameron
at a Conservative Summer Party at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, 2006

Well, well, well…

In October, Mr Cameron flew from London to West Yorkshire and back on Mr Ross’ private helicopter. Two summers ago, Mr Ross paid for Mr Cameron’s return flight from Germany for a World Cup match. Since 2001, Mr Ross has donated £117,560 to the Tories, either to Conservative Central Office or to local branches of the Conservatives near his home in Northamptonshire.

Who’dathunkit?

You’re not fit to wear the shirt, PBD, you plastic-faced doughball.

Chancerism: a right, not a privilege

When even Popbitch has noticed the decline of a once proud newspaper, something’s gone very wrong indeed…

>> Big Questions <<
What people are asking this week

Is the Guardian’s daily “wrapping paper designed by a celebrity” special an elaborate spoof on the vacuous nature of celebrity media coverage or have they gone totally insane?

Channel 4 News.

Gideon Osborne.

It’s very important to try to keep people in their home [and] if necessary to restructure their mortgages to help them do that, and we’ll look at the detail of this scheme and support anything that works.  But the real thing you could do is keep people in work and I’d like to see much more done to help businesses in this difficult time.

If you don’t believe me, the soundbite begins at 2:25 in this clip:

Unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s a Conservative finance spokesman advocating state intervention in commerce to protect jobs.

You may remember the Tories: free market economics, 3½ million unemployed, get on your bike, let’s destroy entire communities because there’s no such thing as society, survival of the fittest, never bail out any business unless it sells arms, fuck the poor and disadvantaged proletarians, annoying woman with pompous hair.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

Cock it.

I agree with Marcel Berlins.

I cannot remember the last time there has been such hysteria over something so relatively minor as the Damian Green affair. Rarely can so many normally reasonable people have lost so many of their marbles.

Marcel clearly must have missed Manuelgate…

The political and media reaction has been stunningly excessive and mostly misguided. The band of columnists and so-called expert commentators fearing the demise of parliamentary democracy - as absurd a slippery slope argument as I’ve heard - or worrying about the decline in our civil liberties, have taken the concept of disproportion to a new level. If I were to look for evidence of our traditional liberties being diminished, it is there in abundance in the laws passed by parliament over the past few years.

Let us look at the reality of what has happened. We don’t know all the facts; indeed, we can be sure of very few. But even accepting a worst-case-scenario speculation, there has been a quite extraordinary over-reaction. I’m not saying everyone involved has behaved perfectly. Mistakes appear to have been made all round. But they do not justify the response that has occurred…

After a flurry of inquiries and furrowed brows, whatever wrongs were committed this time won’t happen again. The Speaker won’t be as accommodating in letting the police into parliament, the police will learn to be more subtle when investigating certain kinds of crime, and the home secretary may learn not to look quite so shifty and terrified each time she appears on television. The unnecessary panic and the suicidally gloomy prognostications will be laid to rest.

What I fear, though, is that this relatively unserious incident will be used to rearrange the relationship between police, politicians and government. This would be damaging.

I’m going to have to kill myself.