Daily Record leads The Way Again..

That all seems fair enough. Just as a brief point, though: if the American neo-conservative right adopt a policy which suddenly - for whatever reason - chimes with those views of someone believing themselves to be standing to the left, does this make the leftward leaning outlook right-wing? As a further by the by, one of my least favourite things (especially in Scotland) is loyalty to a political party. Can't stand that stuff. If someone I don't like has a good (or better) idea, I'm always going to put the goodness of their idea above my dislike. The alternative feels numbing, tribal and anti-progressive, as well as being faintly childish.

Going back a bit.....

That all sounds pretty familiar – and nice one for ordering the books, by the way - especially the bit about (effectively) giving up on TV, searching out documentaries online, dribbling over quality HBO shows (I get boxsets and sloth my way through far too many episodes of stuff at one sitting – but my brain’s active, for sure, it’s constantly having to decide which flavour of crisp my trailing hand should next stuff in my mouth) and needing your brain to be doing something.

The subject of how the internet/technology/gadgetry may be affecting us is probably too huge to tackle in such a confined space, anyway, but I’m very happy to accept that some people consider themselves unaffected and may feel themselves to be thriving in such an arena.

Just for the sake of it, and specifically regarding email, I’m always minded to remember how things predominantly once were, up until the comparatively recent past (Luddite alert, somebody strike up the Hovis tune): the postman came, delivered the post - and that was pretty much that. In no way whatsoever would I then constantly run out to the postbox to check whether he’d been again. And again. And again.....continuing the habit until I fell asleep at night. There seems to be a growing body of evidence, however – if some of these frothing books are to be believed – that this is exactly what a great number of people do with their emails. Why? What’s wrong with waiting? What’s the hurry? (I’m talking specifically of personal correspondence, not things that may actually be reasonably dependent on speed – like business, say.)

With this wholly manufactured sense of urgency – and you can see this manufactured sense of urgency replicated on any number of ****ty TV shows where ****ty challenges are set for ****ty people who have entirely lost any sense of perspective (they cry, they spill their guts, they seem to believe it matters) - comes a carelessness, with many firing off the most woundingly inane bullshit without so much as a thought passing through their heads. (And we need only look at almost any internet forum to see that people are made near insane in their desire to have an opinion Right Now. Delayed gratification is a foreign concept in the rush to appear smart, cutting or maybe simply one of the lads. Construct a decent argument? Listen to what someone else is actually saying? Why bother when you can bash out unadulterated ****e in 140 characters or less. Irreflective stupidity is actively encouraged.)

I don’t really know how, precisely, but this all feels somehow linked to unthinking unhappiness (as opposed to a well thought out depression), casually recorded and applauded violence on YouTube (amongst many other places) and the attendant blurring of reality and entertainment this must bring, the stupefying veneration of celebrity, fame for the sake of fame and the Wikipedia intellects of the can-do, must-have, surface-smart generation.

Someone needs to write a book.

 

So when is your's coming out?
(Remember, as the insightful George W. Bush is purported to have said, ""One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.")

 

George Bush was inspirational, wasn’t he? Amongst my favourites:

You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.

Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?

I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.

How we miss him.

 

'Inspirational' is one way of putting it ... some gems there!

I remember being particularly moved by:

"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office."

"And so the fact that they purchased the machine meant somebody had to make the machine. And when somebody makes a machine, it means there's jobs at the machine-making place."

"I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah."

 

At least one of those pms is from me

 

Nah, def not from me.

 

Oh my God, the machine-making one is like art. You always sort of know what he's meaning - even if he doesn't have the first idea - and kind of hope he gets to the end of the sentence alive. I could barely watch him speak, Espania, it set me on edge too much and made me nervous (a bit like how I feel if I force myself to listen to a radio phone-in).

I've just been quickly trying to find a clip that is particularly excruciating but couldn't seem to lay my hands on it. I wanted to inflict it on you (even though I'm sure you'll have seen it already). Anyway, I think he starts off by saying something like "there's an old saying in Texas....." and then kind of melts into an agonising fog as he forgets what this old saying might be. It's so bad it actually hurts my soul and very nearly makes me feel sorry for the man.

I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah......

Momentous.

There's probably a degree of skill in being so bad.


Mick - nice one. I'll get back to you on all that.

 

[video=youtube;eKgPY1adc0A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A[/video]

I believe this was it?

 

Good man, that's the one. I suppose I should thank you, but I'm not sure that would be appropriate.

 

Some brilliant, informative posts.

George carried me through with the laughs though.

Biggest puppet ever.

 

I Sky+ it weeks ago and not managed to watch it with all the football on the box just now!!

 

Oh yes, watching the press trawl Twitter or Facebook to harvest meaningless additions to the news leaves me frozen with Horrified Old Man Outrage (HOMO). I like hearing other people’s opinions – I love it, in fact, it’s the only way to go – but I’d rather just watch the news being presented in a factual and dispassionate manner before trying to draw my own conclusions. After that, no worries, I can hear what my neighbour or plumber have to say. To see these freshly minted opinions run concurrently with the news, however, has never felt like a good idea. Have Your Say, they enjoin us, in a fireside-friendly manner, as if we were all quite matey, dangerously blurring the lines between expert opinion and the views of your average Steve in Kent.

And when the Twittery opinion of someone like Rio Ferdinand actually is the news, of course, then we’re all in a very bad place - and can hardly be blamed if we give in to the vexed urges of our inner HOMO.

But then you see all these young folk who are obsessed with their gadgets and mobile phones and whatnot, even in supposedly social settings like weddings, say, or family meals. Never mind walking down the street. Got to say something now, got to say something now, got to say something now.......tap tap tap, mouths agape, oblivious to the world around them. What’s that all about? My wee nephews and niece are often so wholly engaged with texting, for example, that they barely even notice if you’re rubbing their thighs and young bits inappropriately - exactly the kind of detached social inattention that could put them at serious risk from sexual predators somewhere down the line.

The state of your inbox – 149 unread private messages? – is a disgrace, by the way. Sort your **** out, Administrator, the people need to have their say.

Back to all the rest later......

(I'd love to see Game Change, incidentally, sounds good: "It could almost be an American propaganda movie, an hour and whatever minutes excusing themselves, the entire nation, for Sarah Palin." There is no excuse for Sarah Palin. Never has been. I'm going to have to track this film down.)

 

Yes, and the extreme left and right often seem to have this weird habit of overlapping. (I notice with a kind of resigned dismay that anti-Jewish rhetoric is presently doing the rounds of the (supposedly civilised dinner party set) left again, however hard they try to dress it all up - sometimes they don't even bother doing that, in fact.)

God, well done for having a go - I struggle to nail my political tendencies. I'll keep my own effort to a simple yes and no list:

Yes: NHS, abortion, gay marriage, gay adoption, free market (with reservations), capitalism (with reservations), tempered patriotism, the nation state (with reservations), outright intolerance of intolerance (religious or otherwise: no kowtowing in the face of the offence (radicalised) Muslims, say, or others may feel when subjected to reasonable mocking or criticisms - aggressive liberalism this may be called, a robustly unapologetic defence of western, Enlightenment values), free speech, super high taxes (but anyone earning less than £20,000, say, should be released from the obligation to pay), free higher education, steady (and controlled) immigration (I’m a fan of immigration), welfare state (with a mission to eradicate welfare dependence), zero tolerance of crime........

No: death penalty, tax havens, Richard Littlejohn.

On first impression, it appears that I may very well be utterly confused. First impressions are generally correct.

(Oh - somebody somewhere once said that the Right are always trying to make government just small enough to fit under our bedroom doors. It may even have been on the West Wing. Anyway, I thought this was funny - and the Righties do often seem unreasonably concerned with what we're getting up to in there.)

Hmm. I quite like all of this and feel certain I’ll have some very firm views that support your ideals just as soon as my mother and uncle have safely passed away. (The waiting is the worst. They're both still dismayingly healthy.)

I would have a tendency to be a pacifist, as well, and feel that to settle a dispute with fists or guns is the ultimate human failing, our greatest show of weakness. How low can we go? How preposterous can we possibly make ourselves? Still, in the face of genocide or (murderously) oppressive dictators, such qualms may become a morally disgusting luxury, airily spouted by folk (like me) who have never faced anything remotely comparable in their lives. And I'll tell you something else: if I ever lived under the fear of a killing madman, I'd be right sore disappointed in the rest of the world if they didn't come and help me out. I'd sigh aggressively whensoever we next should meet.


"If you want to intervene in Libya then you must do Syria. If you criticise a Libyan dictatorship (which you recently whined and dined in London) then you must come out against Saudi Arabian dictatorships, or Chinese dictatorships or Russian election fraud. To pick and chose the dictatorships which no longer suit you is to treat me as a fool...."

True, and nicely said. The problem with this analysis, however, is that it may amount to nothing much more than a manifesto - or excuse - towards inaction. If we don't do everything, we should do nothing at all? Really? I can't buy into that. I share your disgust, but I'll tend to accept that the objectives of compromised politicians will only ever rarely collide with my own. Would that it were different, of course, but I'll greedily take everything I can in the meantime, whilst holding on to the painfully elusive hope that brutalised people everywhere can somehow find the means to sort out their own traumas as we indulgently wring our hands and slobber over trivia in the idle, fattened west.

If we're not too busy ransacking their resources, of course. But that's different, we need our mobile phones and stuff. We're important.

 

Some wonderfully diverse and contrasting stuff in there ... you've both got me worried. I didn't think there were others just as or maybe even more, confuzzled than me. I think it unlikely, though, that you'll ever be locked up for holding such views

 

Being confuzzled is where it’s at, Espania. Certainty is the enemy of all free peoples.

I’m certain of this.

 

Death and taxes?

"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder."
Tad Williams