"That politically incestuous world occupied by politicians, government and opposition, together with the media. Politicians, news broadcasters and journalists now form a ‘political class’ which is in a frenzied world of its own, divorced from the people, and which is turning off viewers, listeners and readers from politics by the million… The way the debate in the Westminster bubble is conducted is insulting to a public that wants more intelligent debate"

Comments by Commons leader Peter Hain on the ‘WESTMINSTER BUBBLE’ (in the US, read Washington), before he resumed being on-message at the Institute for Public Policy Research a day later.

He is right about ‘the political class’ though. In 2003 we have Oceania-style newspeak*, with media conglomerates as controllers in league with the government. What they're doing is wrong but their justifications fall even further from reality. The issue came to the fore with Iraq – WMDs, 45 minutes, Niger uranium – but the spores have been developing for years, pre-TB. What we have is a stratified society where further up the pyramid knowledge and truth exist, but further down they do not. Fiona Bruce, Nicholas Witch-hell or that fuckface who presents those simplified sketches of the issue du jour know full well that they are presenting us no. 10-endorsed tripe but go on lying to us anyway; no point in messing up the sophisticated information systems that support them. People like Bruce, ie educated middle class people, will know the difference and one or two of them may even have the odd alternative opinion but are essentially careerist fuckers who wouldn’t want to change a thing.

Below these are IT-literate active modernists who scent the smell of complete bullshit and can find corroboration online or elsewhere. They are called conspiracy theorists by the system simply because they are inquisitive, but unlike Fiona Puke do want to change the world. However, they find that anti-globalisation demos, online campaigns, direct action or anything else can have pitifully little effect.

Below them are the 9-to-5 escapists who reserve all their skills of enquiry for their job and simply do not have the time, ears or inclination to worry about How The World Is Run or What They Are Telling Us. They are perhaps even more evasive than the Little England masses whose opinions are fed by big business Murdoch-types who simplify the issues down to us-against-them bulldog sloganeering.

The absurd attempts to justify war have hopefully turned on more people to how the spin machine works with the media. The Niger/uranium claim had been discredited by the IAEA before the war started, and the tone of UN weapons inspectors reports had since at least 1998 been that there was a rapidly diminishing chance any WMDs would be found in Iraq. Neither of these was a possible news item until the strategic objectives had been fulfilled, so the BBC didn't cover them. While no 10 would rather debate the minute factor of the 45-minute 'sex-up' fact rather than play it straight on the big issues that got us into war in the first place.

The message is still more important than the medium, so important that nothing let alone facts should get in its way. Gilligan still attends briefings and meetings around Westminster: why shouldn't he? he normally does a great job for Blair & Campbell. And of course the BBC was never going to have its charter revoked.

*BTW, terrible South Bank doc on Orwell on Sunday: Some Bragg-endorsed revisionist production company portrayed him as a mere rat-obsessed paranoid freak. Useful…
  ¶ 4:35 PM

 

The Fourth Estate in the dock – preparations for the media in a post-Blair ‘democracy’

‘The BBC has blood on its hands after the suicide (sic) of Dr. David Kelly’ has been the favoured refrain for many a parasitic journalist since the said MoD civil servant was found face down in a ditch with a knife, some sleeping pills and horse-inflicted wounds. One such muck-raker was Nick Robinson, LieTN’s ‘political editor’, Tory turdmuncher of the highest order and grudgeheaded former BBC political journalist.

We have been shocked by the astonishing acceleration of mendacious practice in the print and broadcast media since the invaders of Iraq ran out of starved Iraqi soldiers to fire expensive guns and shells at. Our polite sensibilities have been rocked by listening to Hoon, Blair and Maxwell House boy Campbell come out with increasingly unconvincing arguments about Iraqi weapons/programmes/ideas/contemplations/comments books/doodles for Mistress Destruction. So much so that we are launching an appeal for the family and memory of Dr David Kelly. The monies raised will be used to buy an authentic patriot missile, which will be planted in a cattle grid outside Basra, to ensure that the only poor and unfortunate victim of the invasion of a crippled Gulf state crawling towards the end of totalitarian rule did not die in vain.

Of course, Andrew Gilligan may well be a shameless cad for taking the Associated Newspaper shilling and may well have exaggerated Dr Kelly’s comments. But whose exaggeration caused the most tragedy we wonder? A PM eager to conduct war because he has surrounded himself with stat-sniffing pseudo-Labour advisers convinced that a repeat of an easy Falklands-style victory will guarantee electoral victory in 2005(ish) and maintain the (democratically asphyxiating) huge majority (so Labour can pick up members in Wimbledon, Bexleyheath, Chester, Fulham and other Tory turdvilles to replace all those leaving the party from former mining communities and cities like Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Glasgow and Swansea)? Or a balding BBC journalist over eager to prove something – categorically – that we all know to be true, no matter how many elected lawyers tell us we’re TOTALLY WRONG AND EVIL SADDAM LOVERS FOR EVEN THINKING THAT YOUR PEACE LOVING GOVERNMENT WOULD EVER CONTEMPLATE SUCH A THING?

The stench of malevolent, corporate-christian inspired, threat toward the impartiality of the media/the importance of investigative journalism in this brain blenchingly banal-but-serious ‘event’ is as obvious and provable as ‘the millionaire novelist’ Jeffrey Archer’s perjury but about as likely to receive another mention on and in the organs of the guardians of public morality – billionaire businessmen.

Blair’s touchy-feely/‘presidential’ style has afforded journalists the opportunity to completely remove any semblance of objectivity from the coverage of the Doc’s demise and stare with exaggerated concealment of rage into the camera/onto the page about this incident. It’s obvious if you know that people like Prick Robinson are Tory cunts with hidden agendas, but if you choose big business’ news organs for your information then you’re going to swallow the ‘human interest’ side of the story hook, line and stinker and demand less press freedom in investigating political corruption (and taking pictures of Michael Douglas’ wedding shoes). I wonder which political party will benefit the most from such reactionary cack, even though No Labour is attempting to impersonate them with nauseating accuracy?

Answers on a shoebox to: Fuckofffuckofffuckofffuckoff, 27 Completecunts Lane, Cranial Pressure, Shrinking Rights, FRAUDSHIRE…
  ¶ 10:31 PM

 

Jilted Jeffrey vs The Evangelicals

While the subtle mind controlling of the likes of the Alpha, Peniel and a thousand other sects raises eyebrow, organised religion and the † don’t often bother us in our search for more esoteric truths. But the ‘Evangelical’ elements of our beloved †ofE have recently been exposing themselves as high-order shits. Over their hounding of gay celibate Rev Jeffrey Jones and their role in his failure to carry on with his Bishopric of Reading post. How can we let an averred homosexual take office? We’d much rather let those who keep their secrets under wraps to carry on preaching homophobic hypocrisy, like a tory party gone bad. It’s an atavistic, embarrassing affair and one of the many things it highlights is the sham of anti-hate, multicultural pluralistic UK that doe-eye liberals often portray us as. The sensible-looking Archbishop Rowan Williams makes futile calls for unity at the York General Synod. It’s so bad even Peter Tatchell has to do his turn.

The Evangelicals have been a force since at least 1534’s Supreme Act established the † of E, and we should remember, because it is often forgot in the ruined abbey museums’ falsified histories, that the church was a debauched, sordid society before then/them. So the monasteries got dissolved, etc. But it’s not sixteenth-century sub-Calvinist fundamentalism we want in this millennium lads. We've had Cromwell and latter-day freaks like Bush since so no thanks.

The unlaw of things-having-to-get-worse-before-they-improve may apply here. Keep with this right-wing lot, or worse by subtle manoeuvring they get actually more powerful in the synod and other † governing bodies, then we could see the dissolution of the † of E as we know it or its much-needed reformation into relevance. If not though, think of a future of a most unholy trinity of them, neo-Blairites and the Creationists in church, government and education and culture.
  ¶ 8:45 PM

 

You can kill some Iraqis, as long as posh cunts can’t kill foxes

Port-quaffing wankers riding through people’s fields chasing symbols of errant nature with packs of baying two- and four-legged slavish conformity in close proximity needs to be stopped. Obviously. But are there greater priorities at the moment in the frosted glass and fingered-arse world of politics? Just mayyyyyybbbbbbeeeeeeeeeee.

What has prompted our interventionist organ to issue an edict on this matter is the example of squabbly rebellion that hunting has generated on the Labour back benches. Banks, Meacher, Prentice and many others who kept quiet over the Iraqi invasion investment clearly threatened the Blairy Bunch with a rebellion if the government’s own (characteristically mirage-like third-way dilution) amendment prevented MPs from voting on the total ban option.

What consistent and reliable representatives these people are. We’ll let you invade another country on spurious evidence and with unknown consequence for all, but if you dare renege on a manifesto commitment that indulges poxy micro-class pinches and hair pulling then, hey, look what a powerful threat we can be to the government’s aims.

Absolutely typical of this grudge-fest of a classtree/country. How can stopping fox hunting be revenge for the miners’ strike? Surely, smashing the public school system and creating meaningful and long-term contracted jobs in former mining and other communities with industrial heritage might be more appropriate. But no, all because little Labour M(alcontent)P(igmy)s on the some time left had a bottle of piss thrown at them by Sir Hugh Juffley-Urquhart when they were on a CND/animal rights/anti-apartheid march in the 60s, we have to make this minor issue a major one.

Destroying the symbolic privileges of the ruling classes is only achievable and sustainable when all of their social excesses and hereditary advantages are exposed and under attack. Unfortunately, this is not possible under a Prick Administer who wants to preserve and engage in many of them (like sending his children to ‘public’ school; permitting corporations to support despotic regimes in the new commercial colonies; restricting access to university for the ‘lower classes’; undermining the NHS by presenting the extra investment as the last prance saloon for a free public health service; and speaking like some cunt from Jedburgh who now works, lives, prays and humps in England).

So we should be grateful then. Arse around your window panes should we.
  ¶ 10:23 PM

 

Digest of pre-blog entries...

27 June 2003

In the week where six Britz were ambushed in a back-room cop shop in Majar al-Kabir and shown justice Shia guerilla-style, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and 10 other factions agreed to a ceasefire after the close attention of Yasser Arafat. Amazing that, someone helping to broker a deal who the Americans/Israelis think they have sidelined to the margins of the roadmap. Also crucial this week was the words of one ‘terrorist’ leader on the fact that it is pointless peddling the ‘Israel has no right to exist’ line any more. Arafat is clearly helping from his mobile phone, but new PM Abu Mazen is an energetic negotiator too.

So will the deal help? Well even as the final wording was being completed this Friday a search for a Hamas explosives technician failed to find him but luckily the IDF found four others to shoot instead. That goes a long way to undermining the peace process and dialogue between Abu Mazen, Sharon and Condaleezza Rice, the latest American apparatchik to arrive with broad smiles and broader plans. Tel Aviv has the right to target legitimate leaders, but they’re going to have to reciprocate the Palestinians’ move if this deal is to last for more than a week. Releasing prisoners and opening up more roads will help.

What would be even better is more land. Quite simply, Palestinians don’t want about 15% of their original homeland or whatever the paltry figure is once huge security walls and ex-judicio settlements are taken into account. Arafat was criticised for revaricating over Clinton’s great proposals but he knew that to agree would have been to sell his people out. More land, more control, more dignity, more chance for a lasting peace. The fact that even with a powerful US role it’s unlikely to happen is why the resistance will never go away.

13 June 2003

The recent Cabinet reshuffle was momentous and occasioned a drinks party in the Cull boredroom of such intensity that our bilious outbursts and vituperative honks melted the floor and we all fell through into the offices of Surging Rectality Consultants, with whom we happily share a building in Southwark with (at the back of the Tate Modem). It was a lot of fun.

Naturally, no fucks were given for the loss of anachronistic legal traditions but there was plenty of fucking directed at the opaque, unelected and seemingly unaccountable replacement - the depressingly Orwellian Ministry of Justice, over which will preside the Bacchanalian girth of Lord Lard of Falconer (who, for information, wears hosiery maps of his path to power underneath his Saville Row slacks).

Pleasingly, the hair of Peter Hain remains prominent. Like a beacon of strop, Hain is now to show off about how much parliamentary reform the government have achieved (and how successful it is), while suggesting no new reform because it has to be strangled at birth and dumped in a bin like a superfluous kitten/puppy as Robin Cook started the reforms and then had the audacity to point out that the Prime Sinister is a lying cunt. Shame on you Robin for articulating the majority view in the country - don't you know that Blair needs a war to indulge his messianic complex (and those of his fuckfaced cretins that advise him but never need to give their names, let alone their roles)?

John Reid. Dr. John Reid. Dr. John Reid MP. The Right Honourable Dr. John Reid MP. The Right Honourable Dr. John Reid MP, Secretary of State for Health. Dr. Rent-a-mouth Reid Manipulator of Parliament, Secretary of State for ignorant, mouthy twats everywhere who burn the books they used to read. Oh, and his doctorate is in history, so he knows even less about health than he did about his last job, Leader of the Commons. You know the Commons, John, the place where you've been acting hard for the last 16 years.

The Rector's purge is over and he still has the gun (loaded with the threatening calibre of electoral failure) pointed at the head of the Labour party.

Euro musings: 6 June 2003

In so many ways parliamentary democracy is designed to offer the least 'choice' possible. By choice, I don't mean the apocryphal version pedalled as education policy, public finance, health provision and all the other functions of the state deemed superfluous by this exploitative government and sold off to the very same people (and/or their mates) who had to be appeased to get into power in the first place.

No. This 'choice' is about the future of Europe. To some Cullers it seems as though the only options are slavish manipulation and satellite abuse at the corporate paws of America or inclusion in a bloated continent relying on the good sense of the civilian
population not to be taken in by nationalist parasites while shrouding the detail in opaque obfuscation; thus playing into the hands of the aforementioned identity leeches.

Of course, we wouldn't want to simplify anything. No, that's the job of newspaper editors and politicians. There is no hope of anyone being able to make an informed decision when the information is tainted by such bias that by simply reading the Scum you are implicated. That's the problem our rurally stagnant, metropolitan vibrant, hysterically historical supermarket sweep of islands has - with national identity.

The impotence and irrelevance of parliamentary democracy to the political process of most peoples' lives was well (and necessarily) established at its creation. It is a club based on the rules shared by the institutions that educated most who served and continue to serve in it. The Whip system is fuss-flick-kick-shit for the dorms and muffin toasters and has nothing to do with getting the most effective legislation on to the statute book (whatever that antiquated tome is).

The party political system has ceased to bother with formulating credible and effective policies and/or ideas that would convert aspirations for a better society into reality. They are now, with the advent of New Flavour, unashamed conduits for corporate
interests and the occasional bit of charity work. From this, it is clear to this most pessimistic of Cullers that the domestic political system has already abdicated responsibility for the effective and equitable operation of our domestic society but, true to its eternally vacillating and ultimately self-interested character, cannot indicate a firm 'choice' either way. Because they might lose out under the new system - whatever it is. The Cull says: You can stick your clamour for a referendum on something that hasn't been decided up your sweaty, bulldog-tattooed, whiplashed arses. Try thinking about why the 2nd world war has never been properly consigned to history and how neither option serves any group other than the self-perpetuating clag that craves power.

29 May 2003

Some questions and leverates for Geoff Hoon. "Just how hard did you get when you first met Don Rumsfeld?" "How were Condoleezza's teeth around your chopper?" and "Stick star wars up your arse, I prefer Star Trek". Geoff Hoon is, of course, a complete bullish cunt. Apart from describing the French as irritants and the whole of continental Europe as 'them' during the Iraq war, he is happy to dismiss claims of links between US policy on Iraq and the substantial oil reserves there as 'one of many left-wing conspiracy theories'; claim that the French position was borne out of excessive theology; Saddam is/was a threat to the world; the Americans can be trusted; and that he isn't going through the male menopause or developing 'man breasts'. His answers are always practically the same, as the Guardian suggested in mid-April: "Iraq has exposed the dangers of placing a technocrat in a key post at such a sensitive time. Hoon's habit of measuring every word before opening his mouth, which can lead to him sounding hesitant and at times slightly pompous, landed him in trouble on the first day of the war when he had what was described as an 'Eric Morecambe moment'. Questioned on Newsnight about why the ground campaign appeared to have started before the main air assault, he insisted that all was going to plan although 'not necessarily always in the same order'".
  ¶ 2:45 PM