ITV- A Request.

Please, please stop cross promoting "Britain's Got Talent" on unrelated programmes, this includes filling the News at Ten with BGT related stories, as you have done regularly this week as well as using the build up to the FA Cup final to have 'Everton Fan' Amanda Holden wishing luck to the team- whilst unsubtlely reminding viewers that BGT is on tonight.

Unusual Historic Interpretations.

In the Korean Peninsula the North Korean state clearly views every American move as a possible precursor to an attack. The same is true of the South Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese Governments and their ally, the US. Given the history of the Korean War this is hardly surprising; a popular Socialist interim-Government was attacked by an American backed anti-Soviet force and much of the Peninsula was laid waste.

WTF!?

Given that the USA had begun reducing it's presence in Korea prior to the war and in the early stages they and the South Korean forces were nearly driven off the peninsula it seems hard to come to the conclusion that they attacked the North.

I'm not sure what evidence there is for believing that the NK regime was initially popular either.

How Corrupt Is The European Parliament?

Well put it this way the "Party of European Socialists" which includes Labour and most of the other principle left of centre parties in the EU, consider that denouncing corruption earns you a place alongside neo nazis in their pantheon of "12 Terrible Candidates".

Troughers Poll.

Julie Kirkbride & Margaret Moran have become the 10th & 11th MPs to announce they are standing down of the expenses story. A far larger number of MPs look completely untenable so I'm going to put a poll up:

How many MPs are going to resign or stand down specifically because of the expenses story?

How many MPs are going to resign or stand down specifically because of the expenses story?
	11 to 20.
	21 to 50
	51 to 80
	81 or more.
pollcode.com free polls

At the moment it looks as though the Conservative's are getting rid of the most MPs but that might just be because they have acted the most quickly. One Labour blogger suggests that the Cameron strategy is to throw obscure back benchers to the sharks in order to protect the front benchers, which seems to apply much more clearly of the behaviour of Gordon Brown who refuses even to criticise the likes of James Purnell, Alaistair Darling and other cabinet ministers (except for Hazel Blears but that was a revenge knifing for her criticism of him last month).

Partygoer Cancels.

BNP leader Nick Griffin has bowed out of attending a Buckingham Palace garden party - saying he had "no wish to embarrass the Queen"

Mr Griffin had been invited to the event by his colleague Richard Barnbrook who, as a London Assembly member, was nominated for two tickets by the Greater London Authority (GLA).

Look just because Mr Barnbrook directed gay porn, art films in the past doesn't make it okay to refer to him as "the queen".

Tiger Shows Tigerish Qualities.

A rare white tiger has mauled to death a New Zealand zoo keeper as horrified tourists looked on, police said.

.....

The zoo - home to some 40 rare lions and tigers - has been closed to visitors, and the tiger destroyed.

The white tiger is even rarer now I guess. I don't understand why they destroyed the animal though, it's a tiger- killing is what it does.

There Will Be Whitewash At The Whitehouse.

This idea doesn't seem too bad to me:

The Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as US Energy Secretary wants to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so they reflect more of the Sun’s light and heat to combat global warming, he said today.

Professor Steven Chu, speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, said this simple and “completely benign” approach to “geo-engineering” could have a vast impact at low cost.

It seems like such an obvious idea that I imagine that anyone who wasn't a Nobel winning physicist would feel a little bit embarrassed proposing it.

If it would actually works as effectively and at as little cost as Chu claims then I'm a little surprised that the idea hasn't featured more prominently in ideas for reducing global warming.Environmentalists appear to prefer solutions that are costly and would entail radical changes to how we live.

North Korea.

Is my reasoning wrong here:

• North Korea is a very poor country.
• Nuclear programmes are extremely expensive.
  
• North Korea menaces its neighbours to extort concessions to alleviate their poverty without reforming their economic system.
• They aren't particularly bothered by international condemnation.
  
• The concessions that they believe they will receive must be greater than the cost of a nuclear programme.
  
• Therefore refusing to make any concessions or enter any negotiations with North Korea would hasten their collapse.

Therefore we* shouldn't respond to the North Korean nuclear explosion.

* I say 'we' but the UK doesn't matter that much in that part of the world, it is the USA, Japan, South Korea, China & Russia who matter.

Update: Of course I should bear in mind that there is a possibility that they are as insane as they appear, take this for example:

May 24, 2009: It has been revealed that Choe Sung Chol, who was in charge of North Korean relations with South Korea, was fired and executed last year. The new South Korean government has reversed a policy of giving North Korea lots of goodies with no strings attached. South Korea now wants North Korea to halt developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. North Korea takes this as a hostile act and an attempt to overthrow the communist police state in North Korea. Choe Sung Chol was apparently held personally responsible for the new South Korean government coming to power, and killed for this failure.

Imagine if we shot David Miliband everytime a foreign country adopted policies we opposed.

Various Stuff.

• Germany's Der Spiegel gives a round up of the reaction of German papers to the British expenses scandal! It's a bit embarrassing that they are talkng about it but they do make the point that the disillusionment with politics isn't a specifically British problem. Therefore the various suggestions for changing our constitution to a more continental style with PR and all that might be worthwhile they aren't the root cause of the dissatisfaction. (Link via Blognor Regis)
  
• I was going to comment about this article which berates Tony Blair for not treating Al Qaeada with the same respect that the crusaders showed to Salidin, but I'll just link to Mick Hartley's post instead.
• I was also going elaborate on previous comments about the BBC, but Minette Marrin's article says exactly what I was going to say.
• With all the Korean stuff, both the Nork Nuke & the suicide of the South Korean president who did so much to appease the North, this Korean focused blog is worth reading.
• Michael Burleigh's article on how the defeat of the Tamil Tigers disproves the maxim that you can't beat terrorism with force.
  

Satanic Cover Up Ongoing, So It Seems.

Beatrix Campbell spent the 1980s and 90s promoting the now discredited fantasies of 'satanic abuse' that culminated in the breaking up of many families in Cleveland, Orkney and else where. He writings really were quite incredible:

'Within two weeks of the first published report of the first discovery of alleged satanic abuse in Britain, an organisation of satanists circulated chief constables, directors, of social services and the Home Office with reports that tried to undermine the credibility of the care workers involved in the case . And they have responded similarly to subsequent controversies.'

Amazingly in some circles she is still considered to be a serious commentator on child abuse. Today she writes about the scandal of the systematic abuse by the catholic church in Ireland, Irish Republicanism is another of her causes so naturally a scandal in which the crucial factor appears to have been the entwined relationship between the Irish state and the Catholic church* has to reflect badly on Britain:

In Britain, by contrast, the child protection system has tottered from crisis to crisis. The UK story began with a child's terrible life and death, in conditions that echo the case of Baby P. Louis Blom-Cooper's inquiry into the 1984 death of Jasmine Beckford transformed children's services: the state took the side of children; social work became an enlightened, empathetic and empowered profession. British paediatricians made world-class discoveries about the hazardous lives of children whose bodies told stories, of intrusion and cruelty that had been, until then, literally unspeakable.

Child protection was then no longer a clerical function of the "cruelty man", it became a subtle child-centred project. But the system could not withstand the resistance of accused adults and their advocates, nor could it cope with the unsettling evidence of scale. While Ireland was taking testimony from survivors, Britain was disdaining them, blaming them for making up all sorts of nonsense.

Actually Britain blamed fanatics like Bea Campbell for promoting silly ideas and incompetent psychologists and social workers for subjecting young children to ludicrous interrogations where they were forced to confess to being abused. I won't comment on the part I bolded, but if anyone else wants to have their say, feel free.

She isn't explicit in the article about what she is referring to, so readers who are unaware of her history won't know that she is still implying that the satanic abuse claims she promoted are true.

* See the comments by Irish senator and journalist, Eoghan Harris, here:

“However, as one born and reared as a Roman Catholic, I ask is there something in the religion of my childhood that allowed this systemic abuse.”

At first glance. It would appear that there was. In Northern Ireland, institutional abuse of Protestant children was very rare, apart from the Kincora incident, and almost unknown in Roman Catholic institutions.

“There is not something inherently bad about Roman Catholicism but there is clearly something inherently bad about Roman Catholicism’s relationship with the Irish Republic.

“Under British rule, these abuses were not practised in Roman Catholic institutions and Protestants did not practise them. The responsibility belongs to the Republic as a whole.”

The Catholic Church in Ireland is a cross border body, so any differences between how it behaved north and south of the border have to be explained in terms of the political entities.

An Example To Follow.

Troughing MPs, take a look at how corrupt politicians redeem themselves in other countries:

The former president of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, who had been under investigation for alleged corruption, has apparently committed suicide.

A spokesman said Mr Roh, 62, appeared to have jumped into a ravine while mountain climbing near his home and had left a brief suicide note.

Just saying.....

I predict conspiracy theories will now emerge, but as I don't speak Korean I will not be able to say "I told you so".

The BBC- A Question.

What is the justification for raising the licence fee in a recession when inflation is close to zero?

This isn't about whether the fee is justified or whether the BBC should exist* but why it needs to receive yet more funds when their costs shouldn't be rising.

* I'd say there might be a justification for a few services that commercial competitors would never match (BBC Radio 3, 4 & the World Service) but most of it is superfluous.

Global Trendsetter.

Malaysia's Prime Minister has announced an end to the country's formal policy of discriminating in favour of ethnic Malays and against Chinese & Indians.

The affirmative action programme, launched in 1970, remains one of the most divisive aspects of Malaysia's multi-ethnic society.

It uniquely favours the Malay majority over the Chinese and Indian minorities.

Malays can buy homes at a discount and have privileged access to higher education and certain employment sectors, among other benefits.

In an interview for Singapore's Straits Times newspaper, Mr Najib said that ethnic quotas damaged his country's competitiveness and ran counter to global trends.

Not completely against global trends though.

More Fowl Expenses.

Sir Peter Vigger's "Duck Island" is probably the most surreal expenses claim yet. I actually think he could have brazened it out because the public has always appreciated an animal lover, as the enduring popularity of Catherine the Great demonstrates,

However he joins Douglas Hogg & Ben Chapman in announcing that he will stand down at the next election. When you consider the people who haven't announced their retirements but look doomed, Elliott Morley, Margaret Moran, David Chaytor etc, it looks to me that this might be the widest political scandal ever.

There have been more serious scandals but they've always involved a handful of miscreants whereas at this rate we could well see 10% of the current crop of MPs forced to stand down or discreditied to such an extent that 'anti-sleaze tickets can topple them with ease.

The full purge won't really get under way until after the Euro election when the broadcast media can take the gloves off and start raking over MPs' expenses.

Is It Cos He Is Catholic?

In Scotland the absence of any substantial number of non whites has led to the obsession with sectarianism among the Scottish Labour Party as a substitute for racism. A lot of defenders of Michael Martin are playing the Taig card:

George Galloway (not technically Labour but of that tribal background):

For a certain class of Englishman every Catholic is a Mick and every working-class Scot is from the Gorbals.

George Foulkes has made similar claims.

So allow me to clear something up for insular West of Scotland Labourites.

Almost no one outside of Glasgow, Belfast & Possibly Liverpool* could care less about the religious background of Michael Martin. If the Conservative Party can elect catholic leaders like Iain Duncan Smith and catholics like Ann Widdecombe are being touted for the speaker's chair then where exactly is this concentration of sectarian bias?

The criticism of Michael Martin has no more because he is Catholic than criticism of Gordon Brown is because he is Presbyterian.

* There isn't much current evidence for a sectarian divide in Liverpool as far as I know, but there did used to be, see the history of the Liverpool Protestant Party for example.

Parliamentary Reform- A Proposal.

Step One- The party whips should no longer be appointed by the party leaders, but instead elected annually by the party's MPs.

Step Two to appear at a later date.

BNP/ World Cup Bid Doomed.

Congratulations to the Prime Minister for his bold attempt to utilise the Brown 'Jonah' effect to combat the BNP, by appearing at the launch of the 2018 World Cup bid alongside Richard Barnbrook. I now feel confident in saying they won't win any MEPs next month.

Of course the Jonah effect does mean that the World Cup bid is doomed. At the launch it appears that Brown was as on the button as ever:

Launched in Wembley Stadium's evocative Bobby Moore room, and with many of the former England captain's fellow 1966 World Cup winning squad present, the temptation to trot out the old cry of how this country gave football to the world and why this gives it a divine right to stage the tournament, more so as by 2018 it will more than 50 years since it was last held here, must have been very strong.

Thankfully the urge was resisted..

Curiously, the only person not on message was Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who kept insisting football would be coming home.

Thanks Gord.

Crap Terrorists.

This man is such a useless terrorist that I kind of feel sorry for him:

Beheshti, unemployed, from Ilford, East London, was a former member of the radical group al-Muhajiroun who had burned himself on a demonstration in May 2005 when he set light to a picture of George Bush.

Calling himself Abu Jihad, he also took his 20-month old daughter, dressed in an "I love al-Qaida" hat, to the protests against the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

On the subject of the Danish cartoons, my post about the origins of religious icons got me thinking about the logic of objecting to them. The reason for the Islamic prohibtion on images of Mohammed (and for the occasional bouts of Christian iconoclasm) is to avoid the worship of images in place of God. Seeing as the Danish cartoons were quite clearly not going to be utilised as objects of worship there isn't any internally coherent theological reason to issue death threats and burn the Danish flag to protest against the Mo-toons. Obviously Muslims will object to the insults of Mohammed, but even the cartoonists who avoided insulting him had to go into hiding.

The threats and violence unleashed in response to the cartoons would have been disgraceful even if the theological objections were coherent, because no one has the right to impose their religious strictures on non believers, but I don't think that the outrage even made sense on the terms of the outragees*.

* Is that a word? Probably not.