On Obama

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Is Barack Obama America's Tony Blair?

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Let's hope that Obama doesn't turn into America's Tony Blair...
The fresh-faced, forty-something leader, with his attractive young family, drank in the applause of his adoring audience, which carried on dancing into the early hours.

This had been a spectacular victory; he'd won big even in areas of the country which had never voted for his party before.

A washed-up, discredited government had been consigned to oblivion. His simple, compelling message of 'change' had helped him assemble an historic, all-conquering coalition - white, black, young, old, liberal, conservative.

It was a new dawn. His was a young country, whose time had come. Politics would never be the same again. Things can only get better.

But enough of Tony Blair. What about Barack Obama?
Yeah, sorry, it's Richard Littlejohn and this is an interesting piece so I'm linking to it.

So there!


To dream, to hope

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Tomgram
For almost eight years, somebody else's bad-seed children had the run of the political sandbox. You could look on in horror as they bullied others, tore up the playground, and even managed to throw sand in their own eyes. You could yell at them (though they were heedless), or wonder where in the world their parents had gone, or who in the world had ever raised them to be this way. It was harder to dream, to hope.

Perhaps the best thing about the election of Barack Obama is simply the thought that, two and a half months from now, those mad children will be gone (though the damage they did will be with us eternally).

I've always believed that...

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PsyBlog: Our Secret Attitude Changes
When you change your attitude about something, do you know why? Psychologists have argued that the inner workings of our minds are largely hidden away from us. One aspect of this is the surprising finding that people are often unaware when they have changed their attitudes.

...It gets weirder. In certain circumstances we may even be convinced that our attitude has never changed. So that we are convinced our 'new' attitude is the one we always had...

Smokin' election results

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Americans Reject Bush Drug War Doctrine

Landslide At The Ballot Box: Voters Approve Nine Out Of Ten Marijuana Law Reform Measures

Millions of Americans nationwide cast votes Tuesday in favor of marijuana law reform, approving nine out of ten ballot measures seeking to liberalize penalties on cannabis use and possession.

In Massachusetts, 65 percent of voters approved Question 2, which replaces criminal penalties for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana (punishable by up to six-months in jail and a $500 fine) with a civil fine of no more than $100.  More than 1.9 million Massachusetts voters (and all but three cities) backed the measure - a greater total than the number of voters who endorsed President Elect Barack Obama (1.88 million)...

In Michigan, 63 percent of voters approved Proposal 1, which legalizes the physician-supervised use and cultivation of medicinal cannabis by state-authorized patients.  More than 3 million voters endorsed the measure, which received approximately 150,000 more votes in Michigan than did Obama. Proposal 1 goes into effect on December 4th, at which time nearly one-quarter of the US population will live in a state that authorizes the legal use of medical cannabis.

Life is so unfair

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John Prescott and his 'private education is the root cause of all class injustice' argument
A debate is raging about the class system.

On one side is a working-class lad who escaped, via life on a ship, to the university education which set him on the path to great things and one of life's 'glittering prizes'.
His is a remarkable story of talent and hard graft, rising to the top; a fine example of a self-made man who, having made it, wants to put something back.

And on the other side is John Prescott...Read On

Harping on

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There is a Halloween and Food Festival, the Huntly Hairst, going on at the moment in the town. Everything from rabbit skinning demonstrations to avant garde harp recitals. Hairst means 'harvest' so it's a kind of harvest festival thing.

Yesterday I had a great time in the town centre. Met lots of people and made some interesting contacts. So today as a little birthday treat I thought I'd take myself along to the 'Strange Rainbow' concert. More of a recital than a concert, if truth be told, but nevertheless...

Well, one of the words in the title was accurate. It was certainly strange. It's not as if we weren't warned. The flyer specifically referred to 'experimental' music but, as this was Catriona McKay, one of Scotland's foremost harpists (or 'harpers' as the blurb calls them) and a wonderful performer of traditional Scottish harp music, you can forgive the audience for thinking they might be treated to a 'musical' event.

Wrong!

I'm not a stuckist. I like some avant garde music. I like industrial music and I've downloaded lots of weird stuff recorded in disused gasometers, WWll pill boxes and the like but this recital seemed little more than an exercise in musical perversity. It wasn't even particularly 'avant garde'. The BBC sound archives are stuffed with recordings from the fifties and sixties of this type of noise made using old piano frames, oscilloscopes and theremins. It was bad then but at least it had the benefit of being 'new'.

Why do extremely talented musicians take their skills and their  wonderful, hand-crafted instruments - designed to produce the most sublime sounds- and then proceed to see just how unmusical they can manage to be? Anyone can make noise. Music, however, is a special kind of noise and even the most aurally challenged can usually tell the difference.

As the recital started I could feel the audience collectively tightening their buttocks. This was going to take some getting through and we all had to manouver into that fixed position which would not give a hint to either the performers or our neighbours that we were finding the whole thing excrutiating.  The guy on my right had no such qualms. I could tell from his breathing (more like sighing really) and his body language that he was, within minutes, regretting the decision he made to spend his Sunday afternoon at this particular venue, as indeed I was myself.  

I made a couple of notes at the end to remind myself of what it all felt like. I needn't have bothered. It will be stuck in my conciousness for a while yet. I wrote: Guantanamo; egg slicer; old tennis racket; tinnitus; earbleed; noise. That just about sums it up. Had the CIA been trying to discover where I'd placed the bomb I think another 30 minutes of this stuff would have had me blabbing away like billy-o.

When the perfomers finally finished and went off I was hoping that the applause wouldn't be too enthusiastic. The last thing I wanted was a bloody encore! That got me thinking. If we had been listening to, say, a Bach piano recital or even the bloody McDonald Brothers and we had been offered another hour's performance free of charge my guess is most of us would have happily stayed. I think the threat of another sixty minutes of Catriona and her laptop-wielding accompanist would have seen a dangerous rush for the exit.

I'm reading a book at the moment about how we experience time, how it seems to go by more quickly as we get older and what we can do to slow it down. I think I've found the answer! Never, even in my most blissful recollections of hot, lingering childhood summers, did an hour take so long to go by as the hour I spent this afternoon in that church.

Fortunately I had a Planxty CD in the car for the journey home. Ah, bless you Christy Moore!


He's Once, Twice, Three Times a Loser

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PETER OBORNE: Gordon's fibs, Keynes and the myth about the depression
The British economy is facing one of its gravest crises, and Gordon Brown's economic framework has been shown up as a sham. It worked well during the good times, but imploded when put to the test. It says a great deal for the Prime Minister's muscular resilience that he has not been totally destroyed - morally, intellectually, emotionally and politically - by this utter disaster and humiliation. 

Brown has used three tricks to ensure his survival:
  • First, he has turned to the oldest and cheapest gambit in the political lexicon: he has blamed Johnny Foreigner.
  • The Prime Minister's second tactic is deception. In a stroke that must have brought a gasp of admiration even from his notoriously untruthful predecessor Tony Blair, the Prime Minister now denies that he ever claimed to bring an end of 'boom and bust'.
  • But it is his third response to the economic collapse that is truly remarkable. Gordon Brown has abandoned prudence and seeks credibility by associating himself instead with the ideas of the great 20th-century economist John Maynard Keynes.

Oborne is as insightful as ever. I just wish he wasn't writing for The Mail.