Sour Alba

Wee video of a friend up Ben Nevis

2007-06-11T16:06:00.000+01:00

As she is spoke

2006-02-08T10:19:00.000Z

I took an online grammar test. I am officially a smug git:

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

Congratulations! If your mission in life

is not already to preserve the English

tongue, it should be. You can smell a

grammatical inaccuracy from fifty yards.

Your speech is revered by the underlings,

though some may blaspheme and call you a

snob. They're just jealous. Go out there

and change the world.

How grammatically correct are you? (Revised with answer key)
brought to you by Quizilla

So little time

2006-02-01T10:51:00.000Z

I found this cool toy at douweosinga.com: it allows you to make a map of all the countries you've visited. When I saw it I felt, I suspect in common with everyone else who has used it, that there is far too little red, far too much grey and what the hell have I been doing with my life.

create your own visited countries map

And what, pray tell, is a shower daddy?

2006-01-16T20:21:00.000Z

Right. This isn't easy for me to say. But I'm a big boy and I can make hard choices.

I ...

I ...

I agree with Boris Johnson.

Now, I know this requires more than a bit of explanation.

In the interests of security and protecting our democratic rights by taking them away, Tony Blair has threatened to imprison anyone who publishes details of the conversation in which he and his Sith Master (Dubya to you and me) discussed bombing the broadcaster Al Jazeera. The buffoonish Tory (Johnson, not Bliar) had this to say:

"The Attorney General's ban is ridiculous, untenable, and redolent of guilt. I do not like people to break the Official Secrets Act, and, as it happens, I would not object to the continued prosecution of those who are alleged to have broken it. But we now have allegations of such severity, against the US President and his motives, that we need to clear them up.

If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence."

He is not alone. The folks at Blairwatch feel the same way. And I do too:

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Wolf in Blair's clothing

2006-01-11T16:22:00.000Z

I give Tony Blair a hard time. That's because he's a war-mongering, deceptive, slimeball who squandered a tremendous opportunity to change this country for the better.

But he's a million times better than the Tory Blair, David Cameron. The trick the right-wing coven behind him are trying to pull off is: 1) Sound like Blair. 2) Talk about the centre and put forward vague, centrist-sounding ideas. 4) Get into power. 5) Take the mask off.

The difference between Blair and Cameron is that Blair did not come from nowhere. People knew what Blair stood for. He was one of a group of promiment "modernisers" in the Labour Party. He took over from a leader who had sought to make the party more electable by moving towards the centre. He was surrounded by like-minded people who had been involved at the highest levels of Labour for years: Brown, Mandelson, etc. The "old" Labourites (including myself) may not have liked the shift to the Right but it was openly the Blair project. Despite the slagging he gets, Blair was not just talk.

The only thing we know about Cameron is he dresses casual, made a half-decent conference speech and has lots of friends who hang out in Notting Hill. I'm worried by that crowd and who pulls their strings. And how far to the right they will be pulled after the election.

R. E. S. P. E. C. T.

2006-01-11T16:12:00.000Z

Tony Blair wants to teach us how to respect each other. Now cynics might suggest this is because he's run out of policies and is now scrabbling around for headline-grabbing buzzwords.

I, however, would not stoop so low. I would merely point out that if TB is so concerned about the respect of the British people he should start treating us with some and come clean about the fairy tales he wove to get us to go to war with Iraq. You see, if you respect people, you don't lie to them.

I mean, we wouldn't want history repeating itself, would we now? Would we?

Time is short and life is good

2006-01-09T12:03:00.000Z

My feel-good predictions for the future? War with Iran. Global pandemic. Tory victory at the next general election.

Happy New Year. I'm emigrating to Mars.

On a lighter note, I rediscovered The Jam this festive season. I've been listening to Going Underground on repeat for the past fortnight. I recommend it as a cure-all against the coming sabre-rattling as we eagerly await the next instalment in George And Tony's Big Terrorist Adventure (Episode IV: A No Hope).

What you see is what you get
You’ve made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
And the public wants what the public gets
But I don't get what this society wants.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

A Merry Christmas to all our readers

2005-12-21T11:00:00.000Z

According to a piece by Dylan Evans in The Guardian, it's the end of the world as we know it:

Is it possible that global civilisation might collapse within our lifetime or that of our children? Until recently, such an idea was the preserve of lunatics and cults. In the past few years, however, an increasing number of intelligent and credible people have been warning that global collapse is a genuine possibility. And many of these are sober scientists, including Lord May, David King and Jared Diamond - people not usually given to exaggeration or drama. The new doomsayers all point to the same collection of threats - climate change, resource depletion and population imbalances being the most important. What makes them especially afraid is that many of these dangers are interrelated, with one tending to exacerbate the others. It is necessary to tackle them all at once if we are to have any chance of avoiding global collapse, they warn.

So, there you go, it's all going tits up. Merry Christmas and God bless us every one.

One for the conspiracy theorists

2005-12-15T11:32:00.000Z

Wouldn't it be weird if George W Bush were assassinated just before the US presidential elections? Think of the boost that would give to Jeb's campaign! Dubya, who has served his purpose, would take all the negativity about Iraq, the economy and Katrina to his grave.

OK, the puppet-masters who pull Dubya's strings might not go that far but how about if there was an assassination "attempt" and Shrub was "in a coma" for the last week of campaigning? Again there'd be a huge boost to Jeb because useful idiots across the US would cast their vote for Bush III in a misguided attempt to help Dubya "pull through".

Also, there'd be the chance for a fantastic photo op of President Jeb with his ex-president dad and his ex-president brother, who made a "miracle recovery" as the last result came in.

And guess what? The "assassin" was Iranian. Or Syrian. Or Venezuelan.

Just a thought.

Unembed time for democracy

2005-12-07T11:21:00.000Z

Surgical strikes. Clinical precision. Liberation. Limited collateral damage. Mission accomplished.

This image (Copyright: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images) shows how unclean the war in Iraq is (And I mean "is", not "was". It's still going on.) According to Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the journalist who took the picture, on 12 September 2004, in Baghdad's Haifa Street: "Twenty-two Iraqi civilians were killed and 48 injured when US helicopters opened fire on crowds celebrating around a burning US armored personnel carrier."

Now if this journalist had been "embedded" with the US armed forces, he wouldn't have taken this picture of maimed civilians. Instead he'd have got a long range shot of boys toys hardware making big bangs and flashes. His copy may also have mentioned a successful operation against militants, insurgents or that useful catch-all phrase "terrorists".

That kid in the baseball cap doesn't really look like a terrorist, does he? (Oh and that guy in the checked shirt lying on the ground on the left? He was upright in the previous shot in the series. Subsequent shots make me think he's dead. How's that for a surgical strike.)

The Digital Journalist has an extensive gallery of these images. And it carries an excellent piece on why a small group of journalists risked their lives to cover conflict while others took refuge among the Coalition soldiers:

"We crossed the lines because we believe it is more important to humanize a conflict than it is to trade in rhetorical truths, or to reinforce easy notions of enemy and friend, which are mere propaganda. Instead, we wanted to document honestly what we witnessed in the war because this is the sole duty of journalists, regardless of their nationality and religion. We were able to do this precisely because we did not carry weapons or claim allegiance to one of the warring parties."

Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère

2005-12-06T11:04:00.000Z

Please sit down. What I'm about to reveal may shock you. You may wish to have a stiff drink handy. (I know I do.)

The media don't always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's shocking I know but there are issues, such as the peak oil phenomenon or the slowing of the gulf stream or the melting of the west Antarctic ice shelf, that are a bit more important than Carol Thatcher winning I'm A Nobody, Let Me Die Slowly In The Jungle.

You will search in vain for this stuff in the corporate media because corporate media exists to sell advertising space, not to tell the frightening truth. It's run by people whose agendas are about making money, and it's easier to do that if you don't rock the boat or irritate the powerful. (Check out The Propaganda Remix Project for more artwork on this.)

So, dear complacent, complicit reader, enjoy the pretty baubles as the waters rise.

One site that provides an (albeit ranty) alternative view is Media Lens. Check it out (though I do find it irritating that they pick on The Guardian all the time. The Guardian are not the real bad guys. Try the Daily Mail or the Sun on for size.)

Publish it not in the streets of Askelon

2005-12-02T13:52:00.000Z

They say revenge is a dish best served cold. (Actually, I think it's best served at several hundred degrees at short range in the back.)

Many years ago former good guy journalist Bob Woodward wrote a biography of the late comedy genius John Belushi. Thanks to the co-operation of Belushi's widow, Woodward had access to all the comedian's friends and colleagues. And he stitched his subject up like a kipper.

Now the widow is getting her own back. She's writing a book about Woodward, who has morphed from being a journalist who exposed secrets into a hack who conceals them for his political pals.

How are the mighty fallen.

Arse brevis

2005-12-01T10:32:00.000Z

More stupid, pointless control freakery emerges from the cornucopia of muppetry that rules us. Irish artist David Godbold was commissioned to officially document the UK general election. Now he claims the politicos tried to censor his work. Has the health service fixed itself? Is there no crime on the streets now? Is nobody poor? Nobody hungry? Has world peace broken out all of a sudden?

No?

Then how come our MPs have time to worry about whether a set of drawings flatters them enough...

The free clean air of democracy

2005-11-23T13:30:00.000Z

Ahhh, can you smell it? It's the clean air of freedom.

British newspapers are being threatened with the Official Secrets Act if they publish sections of a leaked Downing Street memo dealing with a dispute between Bush and Tony the Poodle over Iraq.

Quoting from the account of a meeting between the two on 16 April 2004, The Mirror revealed this morning that Dubya wanted to bomb the Arab TV station Aljazeera. This was too mad even for Blair apparently and he supposedly talked Shrub out of it. (I have my doubts about this: I doubt Blair has any influence over the US President aside from saying "Yes" in the right places. And the wrong ones for that matter.)

Of course, the US has killed Aljazeera staff before. The staion notes in its article on the memo that:

In April 2003, an Aljazeera journalist died when its Baghdad office was struck during a US bombing campaign. Nabil Khoury, a US State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike was a mistake.

In November 2002, Aljazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan, was destroyed by a US missile. None of the crew was at the office at the time. US officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site and did not know it was Aljazeera's office.

What a pair. One wants to stop journalists writing stories. The other wants to kill them.

The big question is what else is in the memo? Aside from a frank admission that the intelligence behind the war was just made up for political reasons, I suspect there is one terrifying revelation.

This blog can exclusively reveal the contents of that memo. Bush wanted to bom Aljazeera because he thought it was a country.

He actually meant Iran.

(OK, this is a joke but you read it here first.)

White hats, white phosphorous

2005-11-18T16:04:00.000Z

Phew, thank goodness that bad man Saddam is gone. (And he really was an evil bastard, don't get me wrong.) I mean he tortured people and used cruel, non-conventional weapons against those who opposed him.

Oh, but wait a minute, what's this? The United States has been torturing people. And it used white phosphorous (think modern napalm) against civilian men, women and children , despite denying this repeatedly.

Children? Children? What the fuck are these idiots playing at? How exactly does burning children to the bone win hearts and minds?

The Americans have no idea what they are doing in Iraq. Rather than protecting the civilian population, they treat everyone as a jihadi and would sooner wipe out a village to kill one sniper than expose their own troops to any risk. This is called "force protection". The British Army learned hard, bloody lessons in Northern Ireland and exercises more restraint.

No wonder Iraq has descended into civil war.

And the answer to this mess? Go back in time and don't invade Iraq in the first place.

Don't like Saddam? Go back in time and don't arm and fund the vile, murdering swine in the first place.

Don't like those answers? Tough. Learn the lesson. And the next time some venal politician tells you: "He's a Hitler, he's got superweapons that will kill your mum," don't believe them.

Iraq is already embroiled in a civil war. Bush and Blair's mad crusade has made Iraq a Jihadi Recruiting Centre and soldiers and civilians will be paying the price in blood for years.

White phosphorous on children? Torture centres around the world?

Yeah, we're the good guys. Pass round the white hats...

The stories I long to see

2005-11-17T12:44:00.000Z

Here are the news pieces I would really like to see:

1. Denying he was suffering from Messianic delusions, Tony Blair commented yesterday: "Nolo me tangere."

2. Cabinet minister denies affair with party worker, admits liking for rent boys and coprophilia.

3. Minor celebrity indulges in petty indiscretion. No-one cares.

From the halls of Montezuma to the World Wide Web

2005-11-15T10:41:00.000Z

In a piece for WSJ.com (which non-subscribers can read thanks to David Farber), Norm Coleman, a Republican senator from Minnesota, has compared the attempt by the rest of the world to get a share of control of the net to the 1938 Munich agreement which betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

So let's get this clear: there's a global communication system. It's run by one country. Other countries want to be involved in running it. Wow, the similarities with the rise of Nazism are indeed striking. Thanks to the cogent arguments of Norm, I am now convinced that the UN is building cyber death camps as we speak. At least, Soviet Russia cannot be invaded this time as it now longer exists. But Tony Blair must act now to remove the British Expeditionary Force from ... err ... the web.

Joking apart, isn't it interesting that if an institution answerable to the US government controls something then it's the embodiment of free enterprise. But if the rest of us get involved it's "politicisation".

Tooth Fairy linked with Hearts

2005-11-11T10:40:00.000Z

This news just in:

The Tooth Fairy is the latest high-profile figure to be linked to the post of Director of Football at Heart of Madlithuanian football club.

While Ms Fairy is famed worldwide for her distribution skills and commitment to youth development, her lack of coaching experience has caused some to question her fitness for the role.

Answering these doubts, Ms Fairy said: "I may be a mythical being but at least my name does not appear on the Sex Offenders Register."

Other notable individuals linked with the Hearts job include Claudio Ranieri, Sir Bobby Robson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Wizard of Oz and Father Christmas.

Gianluca Vialli was last night unavailable for comment.

Not a tear but a cheer

2005-11-10T10:55:00.000Z

So farewell then, Tony Blair? Am I alone in thinking that perhaps the Tonester's defeat is part of a wider plan?

Remember this is the man who translated Machiavelli into Inscrutablese. He knows he's on the way out and cares about his legacy. I wonder if this defeat actually benefits Tony in some way, allowing him to portray himself as a strong man betrayed by a weak party.

Actually I probably am alone in that view and Blair will be shut in a room with the political equivalent of a bottle of whisky, a pistol and earnest encouragement to "do the decent thing".

When he goes he will be celebrated by many. But for me he will be always the Labour leader who had a glorious opportunity - and overwhelming mandate - to transform Britain into a left-of-centre modern nation but became bogged down in timidity, mediocrity and the pages of the Daily Mail.

A pity. But, credit where credit is due, I'll always bless him for Devolution.

Many a true word spoken in jest

2005-11-09T11:25:00.000Z

From The Onion, which still sometimes packs an acidic punch:

The Death Of Rosa Parks: 'Now We Can Finally Put Civil Rights Behind Us'
"During today's service, America not only bade farewell to a seamstress from Alabama," President Bush said at a special GOP fundraiser Monday evening, "America buried the idea of civil rights itself."

The thin Brown line

2005-11-09T09:46:00.000Z

Good to see the priorities of "New" "Old" Labour in action. Gordon "The Man Who Would Be King" Brown has called off a peace mission to the Middle East to hurry back to Blighty to help Blair be tough on civil liberties and the causes of civil liberties.

Now, if Big Brown had any sense, he'd have missed the flight back so that the PM would lose the vote, thus hastening his exit from No 10 and the accession of the dour chancellor. But Brown doesn't have any sense. We know this because he did the famous Granita deal with the Tonester without getting anything in writing saying when the PM would step down. Doh!

One more point about this "90 day without charge" crap. The police are screaming for it but the police failed to stop the 7/7 bombers. (Now, there are all sorts of good reasons why this happened but the bottom line is they failed.) The intelligence services failed to stop the 7/7 bombers.

Quick question: Would the power to hold people without charge for 90 days have prevented the London bombings?

Answer: Of course it bloody wouldn't. If the intelligence services and police had any clue about what these misguided murderous bozos were up to, they would have found something to charge them with. I mean, it's not like there's a loophole somewhere that makes planning to slaughter people legal.

But Tony can't criticise the police because he wants to be "tough on crime". And he can't criticise the intelligence services because he owes them one for taking the blame for his decision to go to war in Iraq in pursuit of WMDs that did not exist.

As for the police using these powers responsibly, well they have the power to shoot people and they don't always use that responsibly now, do they? Do they?

Chinese whispers

2005-11-08T13:12:00.000Z

I wonder what wriggly form of words Tony Blair will use during the visit of the Chinese premier Hu Jintao? After all the real stuff about trading opportunities, I wonder if there will be time for Our Great Leader to mention China's appalling record on human rights?

I fear not. And I fear the wriggly words will be uttered to us, the grateful British public, rather than placed before our guest, who needs to hear how sickened the world still is by the treatment of Tibet, the massacre of Tiananmen Square and much much more.

But I'm sure there'll be lots of guff about support for the Return To The War On Terror Part II: The Quickening. Yes, at the end of the visit, the soppy stuff about being able to vote and speak your mind will be discarded. Instead, two "strong" men will declare their opposition to terrorists.

Of course, the Chinese view of terrorists might be somewhat different to our own...

Panem et circenses

2005-11-08T10:27:00.000Z

Have you heard of the power law curve? It's the law that governs blog traffic. Basically a few get lots of visitors, the rest get a trickle.

I can't help but notice that the really popular ones are all about sex. Don't believe me? Check out Mimi in New York - the alleged writings of a stripper/journalist - and the obviously fictional Belle Du Jour, diary of a London call girl.

At the risk of being juvenal, I'd also suggest that the punters also want weird stuff.

Thus, after consultation with respected experts, I have decided that the perfect blog to deliver fame and fortune would combine these elements in an extreme form.

So when you see the launch of "Morticia Delicia - the confessions of a porn star cum mortuary attendant" you will know that the next big thing has arrived in a heady mixture of embalming fluid and lube.

Making the world safe for silent democracy

2005-11-07T16:29:00.000Z

Oh joy. Oh rapture. Mr Tony's wacky plans to make Britain safe for democracy seem to be in trouble. For those of you not versed in the great civic freedoms of the United Kingdom, Our Great Leader has been told the police want to lock people up for 90 days without charge if they are suspected of being terrorists. Or knowing terrorists. Or liking terrorists. Or suggesting that not all terrorists are necessarily mindless automata controlled by Ayatollah Khomenei from beyond the grave.

Now, however, a few MPs have discovered the spines that went missing in the run-up to the Iraq war. Bliar's plans to rob us of the right to habeus corpus only just scraped through the Commons. The House of Lords will feel able to rip these insane proposals to shreds.

But does it not say something about the UK in the 21st century that our freedom will be protected by the totally undemocratic House of Lords?