Nice one

I confess that I laughed out loud when I saw this:

An Open Message From The People Of Naxos, Greece, To Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill Regarding His Crackdown On Happy Hour Drinks Promotions

Same old same old

Professor Neil McKeganey, Scottish drugs prevention guru, writing in The Telegraph, wants to intensify the existing policy:

For the past 15 years, government has pursued a drug policy that has been more about reducing the harms associated with illegal drug use than about reducing the scale of the problem itself.
That is where we are going wrong.
Yes, policy must focus on treatments that enable addicts to become drug free, but also on hard-hitting prevention with robust enforcement.
Policing the problem means tackling street-level drug dealing directly. It must also mean tougher action against those who profit from the trade. We need to ensure that our police are protecting our communities. This will not be done through intermittent, high-profile campaigns, but sustained action.

Now I know nothing about drugs (other than the usual Al K and Nick O'). When I was a student, I didn't move in those kind of circles and, subsequently, I've never felt the need (nor had the opportunity).

But, do the phrases 'flogging a dead horse' and 'pissing into the wind' come to mind? Is more of the same really going to deliver? Did a police crackdown ever solve anything? Even a 'sustained' police crackdown, even if it were possible? How often over the years have you heard of special police task forces set up to deal with the drugs problem? Is more of them going to do the business? Let's face it, the present policy of prohibition, combined with modest support for addicts, has utterly failed.

Disintegration?

Over-dramatic, you think? Well, perhaps.

I suppose that it is a sign. A relatively anodyne, even platitudinous, article by in The Guardian by Mr Miliband has triggered the firestorm. And it is not just the media; 'friends' of Mr Brown and Mr Miliband are briefing and counterbriefing. The leadership of the Labour Party is clearly in play, despite the organisational obstacles to replacement. From now on, anything said by any member of the cabinet will be interpreted and analysed in terms of the leadership question.

Meanwhile the mini-me Scottish version of the leadership question wends its weary way from the starting gate down the first furlong. None of the nags looks impressive. Does it really matter who wins? The most significant development in the press today is the report that in last year's Scottish campaigns the SNP outspent Labour by more than two to one. How the mighty have fallen.

Is there a way back for Scottish Labour? Of course, but it will take time and a lot of hard work to re-build the party structure. And I am not sure that the party leadership has the capacity, the understanding or the will to do it. I hope I'm wrong ...

Holiday attire

Poor old Gordon. His wife buys him a nice new sports jacket and a pair of slacks, but he still gets caned for it in the press.

I'm sure his mother would think that he looked very smart.

And, yes, it's probably the kind of thing I would wear.

Quote of the day

Boris (for yes, it is he, now back with The Telegraph):

For most of the next two years, it can be confidently predicted, the story of the Labour Government will be about coups and plots and Cabinet rivals warring for succession. One day we will be told that the armies of Hattie Harperson are mustering in the wings; the next day the media will be talking up the claims of Geoff Hoon - "Who Hoon?", as Lenin so pungently put it.
One day a female columnist will announce that Miliband has the magnetic good looks to see off Cameron; and the next day a rival female columnist will proclaim that, on the contrary, James Purnell is the man, what with his sideburns and his interesting views on welfare reform.
On and on it will go, day after day, and at no stage will the plotters come within a million miles of actually jugulating Gordon Brown. For all their bluster, for all their off-the-record briefings, they know that the practical difficulties are immense.

Probably right - in any event, a period of calm in the UK labour party would be welcome.

It's not a sprint, you know

So the starting gun has been fired. The BBC reports:

The race to find a new Scottish Labour Party leader is under way after former minister Iain Gray announced he was standing in the contest.
The move came after party officials met to set out the timetable.
There will also be a deputy leadership election after Cathy Jamieson quit the job after more than seven years.
Ms Jamieson, along with Andy Kerr, are thought to be the leadership front-runners. Mr Gray was the first to officially announce he was standing.
...
The new leadership team will be unveiled on 13 September and MSPs have until 1 August to secure the support of five colleagues to go forward to the next stage.

I appreciate that speed has to be balanced against democracy, but a seven week process seems excessive. But the Labour Party seems to be enmeshed in bureaucracy, even as its infrastructure decays.

Linguistic pedantry

You can become obsessed with (but not of) this sort of stuff. The Guardian shows a little respect for language:

If you are bored of columns about language it's possible you will be disinterested in this one. But if reading that sentence made you livid and you feel like breaking off to send me a Mrs Weasley-style Howler message, take a deep breath and read on.
You can be tired of something, or sick of it; you can be bored with, or by it, but you oughtn't, strictly speaking, to be bored of it. And, while we're on the subject of sustaining an interest, being uninterested is not the same as being disinterested. Of course the two are not mutually exclusive, you might be uninterested (couldn't care less) and disinterested (impartial) at the same time, but the two ideas don't usually keep company.

Me, I love it. I'm not disinterested at all.

Now, if I can only restore some respect for the apostrophe, I would be a happy man.

Why Labour lost Glasgow East

It's not so difficult. The Sunday Times has a couple of articles in explanation. First, about Michael Martin aka Mr Speaker:

There is a dynastic quality to Martin’s Scottish political empire. Since 1979 he has been MP for Glasgow North East (formerly Springburn); his son, Paul, was elected to the equivalent seat in the same constituency in the Scottish parliament, despite having shown little dynamism while he served on Glasgow council. At election times, the pair of them appear together on the streets in identical suits and shirts. “We call them the Martin mafia,” laughs an SNP activist.
But this is not just a father-and-son political operation. For several years after Martin became Speaker, his wife, Mary, was also on his constituency payroll, earning £25,000 a year for unspecified duties, even though she was living in London with her husband.

Then we have the former MP, Mr Marshall:

Power has rotted what Labour thinks it stands for in Scotland and now the public smell it. The expenses scandal looming over David Marshall, who stood down from the seat on the grounds of ill-health, was not used by the SNP in the campaign. But people queuing for their rolls and sausage on the Gallowgate talked about it all the same. Marshall is said to have claimed more than half a million pounds to run an office from home, though the rumours are as yet unconfirmed.

Would it be unreasonable to suggest that these people have been in office for too long? And do not believe that they are the only ones.

Prezzies

I confess that I have never understood this business of gifts for visiting US politicians. According to The Observer:

Obama met Brown's children and his brother-in-law during a relaxed visit, during which the Browns presented Obama with books on Churchill and silver photo frames for his daughters.
The Tories had their own meeting between Obama and David Cameron, at which the senator was overheard congratulating Cameron on 'all your success'. The two spent 20 minutes chatting about juggling fatherhood and politics and discussing Afghanistan and the economy. Cameron gave him a box of CDs including albums by the Smiths, Radiohead and Lily Allen.

Why would the Senator want books on Churchill? And his daughters are not really going to be excited by photo frames. As for CDs, Mr Obama seems more likely to be of the i-pod generation. I will leave others to criticise the choice of music - but the Smiths?

A plea

Look guys, just go away, please. There are far too many people reading me. And in the past couple of weeks, there has been an unescapable surge in hits. You must have better things to do.

It's uncomfortable - I'm not a star blogger. I just do my thing for those and such as those. I don't want to be an eminent pundit. People might start paying attention.

So leave me alone to my decent obscurity.

In praise of Random Acts of Reality

It's not often that I get upset by reading the work of another blogger. But this did the trick:

We are called to a young woman in her thirties. Our computer screen sends it to us as a possible broken arm.
As we arrive at the house we are met by the rather excitable husband. He is all sweetness and light, thanking us for turning up so quickly, saying how worried he is and smiling at us a lot.
His wife is in bed, hidden under the duvet, she's fully clothed so we remove the cover to speak to her. She's not very communicative and every time she says something she looks at her husband for approval.

Please read the post and think about it.

The art of politics

Alex took a chance. He didn't need to visit the constituency eleven times. He didn't need to forecast a political earthquake. He could have sat back and relaxed in the knowledge that Glasgow East was not SNP territory. A couple of visits would have been enough to demonstrate that the SNP were taking it seriously enough.

But he committed himself. He may be a smug bastard, but he is a leader. And he has got a result.

Phew! Saved.

Aye, well don't get your hopes up. The FT reports:

The Arctic holds as much as 90bn barrels of undiscovered oil and has as much undiscovered gas as all the reserves known to exist in Russia, US government scientists have said in the first governmental assessment of the region’s resources.
The report is likely to add impetus to the race among polar nations, such as Russia, the US, Denmark, Norway and Canada, for control of the region.
The US Geological Survey believes the Arctic holds 13 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil, while 1,669,000bn cubic feet of natural gas is equivalent to 30 per cent of the world’s undiscovered gas reserves.

If it's undiscovered, how do they know it's there and how much of it is there?

The USGS report used a probabilistic methodology and included only undiscovered resources that could be exploited using today’s technology.

I think this means that they're guessing ...

Down to the wire

I have been accused of a certain amount of cynicism with regard to politics, an accusation to which I would cheerfully plead guilty on most occasions. But I have been impressed by the Glasgow East campaign.

Perhaps they were not the most astute candidates ever chosen to run in a by-election; perhaps they were not even the first choice of their respective parties. But I can only admire the sheer effort that the candidates of the four main parties have put in. To them, it matters - and they have shown it matters. And even if you do not believe the tales of the thousands of party activists thrown into the battle, it would be difficult to deny that their parties have fully supported them. It is almost enough to restore my faith in politics.

The saddest part of it is that they will be lucky if more than a third of the electorate bothers to vote.

Cookery

I'm a sucker for cookery programmes and this is relatively brief. You have to feel sorry for the poor bloke standing around, trying to make conversation.




I don't agree with the ice cubes - you have to let it chill in the frigo.

The cult of personality

Ann Treneman of The Times strays away from her usual beat at Westminster to visit the Glasgow East by-election and duly discovers the star of the show:

Alex processed (there is no other word) along the pavement. Music blared out of the centre. By chance it was the Pretenders. “'Cause I gonna make you see, there's nobody else here, no one like me,” they sang. “I'm special, so special! I gotta have some of your attention. Give it to me!”
And how he got it. His minders moved us over so photographers could get a clear shot. “My God, it's like Princess Diana!” gasped one chap, as he gazed at the wall of snappers.
Well, not quite, but, on a grey day in Glasgow East, it felt a bit celeb-crazed. The shoppers loved him. He hugged. He slapped backs. He squeezed arms. He chortled. Talk about acting. He put the others to shame. Do they give Oscars for Best Performance at a By-Election?

It's worth reading the whole thing.

Music of the week

Cos I love it:

Quote of the day

Andrew O'Hagan in The Telegraph (here):

"The Nationalists may be nice - or not so nice - civil servants and bank managers, but their vision of modern Scotland is at heart poisonously regressive. They are without intellectual content and their powerful presence in Scottish political life in recent years has done nothing to improve the lives of Scotland's poor. They don't wish to build on the past and be protective of what has been good for Scotland - i.e. the Union - but would sooner drag Scotland back to the mythical glory of a past that never existed."

Overdoing it a bit, I would have thought, but then this is a commentator who thinks that Glasgow East and Govan are neighbouring constituencies (see earlier in the article).

It's a ritual

Did you know that the government has published a green paper on social security promising the reform of incapacity benefit? No, don't be silly, I am not talking about today's announcement - this green paper was published in January 2006. Here is an extract from the ministry's press release:

The paper seeks to end the legacy of benefit dependency and deprivation that can damage communities across Britain.
Our proposals provide a once in a generation opportunity to transform the welfare state. They build upon our principles for reform; rights and responsibilities providing the individual with the support they need to transform their own life-chances, and those of their family.
They include detailed proposals for:
- reforming incapacity benefits;
- a £360 million roll out of Pathways to Work across the country by 2008
- extending support to lone parents and older workers;

Sounds familiar? That's because every two years or so the government announces its intention to reform incapacity benefit. And today's the day, just as it was in January 2006. Incapacity benefit will be replaced (or at least re-named) and reformed. Somehow, however, that ol' man river, he just keeps rollin' along ...

Beer

Here is a profile of the provocative new microbrewery, BrewDog, which seems to enjoy getting in the faces of politicians and health fascists.

On the basis that Scottish brewers should be encouraged, I recently bought a bottle of their Punk IPA in my local Tesco's (not quite so obviously provocative then). Quite nice but a bit more expensive than my habitual diet of Deuchar's and Caley 80/-.

Will I try their Tokyo at 12%? Not a chance. Even the Speedball at 8% is too strong for me.

But the guys from Fraserburgh have an interesting website and an amusing line in marketing.