Thursday, November 12, 2009

Captain Robert Nairac


Kevin Crilly has been charged with the abduction and murder of Captain Robert Nairac. Nairac's Wikipedia entry is here.

It was a particularly Gothic episode from the troubles in Ireland in the mid-70s that was the subject of Eoin MacNamee's novel The Ultras.

If you like David Peace's Red Riding novels, you'll like this one. 'Like' may not be the right word though....

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Stopped clock. Twice a day.

I've not said it before and I'll probably never say it again, but George Monbiot is absolutely right here.
It's true that the vacuity and cowardice of the local papers has been exacerbated by consolidation, profit-seeking, the collapse of advertising revenues and a decline in readership. But even if they weren't subject to these pressures, they would still do more harm than good.

Local papers defend the powerful because the powerful own and fund them. I can think of only two local newspapers that consistently hold power to account: the West Highland Free Press and the Salford Star. Are any others worth saving? If so, please let me know. Yes, we need a press that speaks truth to power, that gives voice to the powerless and fights for local democracy. But this ain't it.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

White male grievances

He's not saying much hat you won't have read elsewhere (including on this blog) but the freethinking economist does it with a bit of kerpow in this post: Clarkson, Dalrymple and the patriotic urge to leave the country.

He links to this one by Chris about subjective well-being that I missed because it's been frantic here lately.

Should Irish Republicans wear poppies?

I've argued - over on Slugger - that it would be a good idea. Have a look?

Saturday, November 07, 2009

Notverygood PR for Goldman Sachs

You'll have probably modified your own view of Goldman Sachs over the last year or so, but whatever it is, whoever does their PR may be thinking about this para from Rolling Stone a few months ago and wondering how it can be dealt with:
"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Crime statistics

From Counago and Spaves quoting Laurie Taylor:

"....smiling white collar fraudsters who during the course of their everyday jobs steal massive amounts of money from banks, pension funds, corporations, government and private individuals.

According to even the most conservative estimate £20 billion was stolen in 2005 and City accountants believe such fraud figures may treble as a result of the current recession.

And how much of that fraud will be detected? One leading police fraud officer told me that the figure was probably no more than five per cent. Cases of financial crime are complex, but can that really be sufficient explanation for the news that the Financial Services Authority failed to initiate a single prosecution last year?"
A tip of the broadest-tipped titfer to Wilbur the blogless.

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Carve his name with pride

I didn't think the roundup would start this quickly. Nosemonkey was the first one to smuggle out news. He even managed this detailed transmission before he breathed his last.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Harsh but fair

Via Banditry:

Sunday, November 01, 2009

State-subsidised journalism?

From The Washington Post (hat tip: Damian)
"The value of federal journalism subsidies as a percentage of gross domestic product in the first half of the 19th century ran, by our calculations, to about $30 billion per year in current dollars. It is this sort of commitment, established by Jefferson and Madison, that we must imagine to address the current crisis.

That level of subsidy to journalism is found in Scandinavian nations, which are among the freest and most democratic in the world."
This bit is particularly striking:
For the first time in American history, we are nearing a point where we will no longer have more than minimal resources (relative to the nation's size) dedicated to reporting the news. The prospect that this "information age" could be characterized by unchecked spin and propaganda, where the best-financed voice almost always wins, and cynicism, ignorance and demoralization reach pandemic levels, is real. So, too, is the threat to the American experiment.

Our Constitution is, the Supreme Court reminds us, predicated on the assumption of an informed and participating citizenry. If insufficient news media exist to make that a realistic outcome, the foundation crumbles.
Sorry to repeat this, (it's not in that article, but it's pertinent):
“If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the latter.”
Thomas Jefferson


(Update: the blogger software appears to be dropping hyperlinks for some reason - no idea why. If it does it again, the Washington Post article is here):
http://tinyurl.com/yhjcsj4

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Wuthering Heights

I can't think of a song that's more conflicted than this one. The video helps here.

Great song. But completely bonkers. They must have done something in Kate's house to damp down her self-consciousness.



I think I linked to this one before, but its the song without all of the histrionics:

Friday, October 30, 2009

BNP and YouGov

Last week, Nick Griffin was very pleased about the visitor-numbers on his website. I'm sure not all of them were well-wishers though. Here's something I noticed while having a little poke around:
If EVERY BNP supporter joined Yougov, we could put our support on a par with the Lib Dems and possibly higher! On top of this we could actually raise money for the Party via Yougov as you actually get paid for participating in surveys.
In short, if they don't tell YouGov that they are BNP members then the only way BNP 'over-representation' would get filtered out is by comparison with other data-sets. YouGov should be able to spot outliers.

I made a call to a friend in the polling industry and his view is that this could mean that YouGov are subsidising knuckledraggers and getting their data wrong - over-estimating BNP support (though they do, I understand, weight their conclusions on the understanding that some people don't even admit to pollsters that they vote for the BNP).

Of course the other issue is that - if the BNP have a demographic significantly different from the broad swathe of UK nationals - it is possible that YouGov's 'normalisation' would sideline BNP-members opinions.

Now, if it turned out that BNP members have a dramatically untypical British demographic, even amongst 'ethnic whites', then this would be quite telling - wouldn't it?

Citizens' Coalition for Public Service Broadcasting (CCPSB)

A public service message:

The CCPSB is to be launched at the House of Commons on Monday evening. I would urge you strongly to visit their website, tell the good people there that you support their excellent statement and then go and join their Facebook group as well. I would also ask you to get all of your friends to do the same, and if you have a blog of your own, please write a similar post to this one.

And twitter about it as well, I suppose.

You know that this makes sense.

Thank you.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

The Tory Id

None of the top Tory bloggers appear to believe that climate change is a genuine threat.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Evidence-based bullshit generators

Matthew Taylor's potentially catastrophic 'nighttime flatulence' confession comes bundled up in a post that points to a very worthwhile essay - 'On bullshit in cultural policy practice and research' (pdf)
"At the heart of the notion of ‘performance paradox’, thus, is the baffling observation that measures such as the imposition of targets, performance management, evidence-based policy-making, pressures to evaluate the extent to which arts project have the socio-economic impact that policy makers presume they do - or in other words a whole range of measures introduced with the aim to improve transparency and accountability in the public sector - might have resulted, in reality, in more bullshit being produced and injected in public discourses around policies for the cultural sector, and in opaque political messages amounting to little more than doublespeak."
It is widely observed that means-testing and other ways of assessing tax / benefit outcomes simply encourage gaming and dishonesty (this is one of the arguments for the Citizens' Basic Income - an idea that seems good in principle but one that currently lacks an accompanying implementation manual).

Surely the same is true of bureaucracies and politicians? They have to answer for outcomes. If they are micromanaged and subject to extraordinary demands for accountability and transparency, they will simply 'game' the system or circumvent it.

And they will often get caught doing so.

And when this happens, everyone will throw up their hands in despair at how terrible politicians are.

The thing that a lot of transparency campaigners don't seem to have understood is that this is the desired outcome on the libertarian right - where many of these demands for transparency emanate.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Led by donkeys

Here's Pete on the posties.
"Most of the people who work on the front line are not obstacles, they are experts. Their knowledge is far more valuable than the snake oil of management theory. The denigration of the workforce and the elevation of the great talents who brought us the credit crunch into superheroes is one of the more unlikely episodes in a class war, one being waged, increasingly successfully, against workers, rather than by them."
Leaving aside one's ritual allegiances, if anyone is in any doubt about which side to take in this dispute, just go to your local town-centre post office and make a judgment on the quality of management behind it. The Post Office has been willfully mismanaged for a long time, and I can only see it as some kind of softening-up exercise for privatisation.

Prepare to *facepalm*

I think that this website illustrates the pros and cons of direct democracy quite well, don't you?

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Knuckledragger latest

Anton is taking us down memory lane with this post on tabloid reaction to Question Time.

Friday, October 23, 2009

More Himself

For some reason, I've never seen this one. Giving Motty a drubbing, and just picking a fight for the sake of it.

Again, enigmatic and fascinating.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

A litmus test for Question Time

Justifying the decision to allow the leader of the British National Party to take part in BBC1's Question Time, it is Mark Thompson's contention that...
"...It remains the BBC's obligation to scrutinise and hold to account all elected representatives..."
Fair enough. There's a significant body of opinion that believes that this programme has done nothing of the sort for many years. Our argument will gather real data tonight to support it.

Nick Griffin will tonight present a series of malicious falsehoods and evasions to the audience and call them arguments. We will see if he benefits from doing so or it it damages him.

If his reputation and electoral standing are damaged as a result of this programme, Thompson's point will be proven. If the reverse happens, there will remain no justification for keeping Question Time on the schedules of a public service broadcaster - unless they decide to move it to early evening on a weekend and rebrand it as entertainment.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

With friends like these....

Jeremy Dear asks: Is the BBC safe in the Tories' hands?

Meanwhile, it seems that the BEEB is almost friendless. Even it's cheerleader is a heckler.