'Nother Solent

"What sort of sycophant are you?" "Er- what sort would you like me to be?"

That's a line from my self-defining movie, 101 Dalmations. Sounds like the owner of OK is my kinda guy. I tried to link to the story in the Independent, but, as usual, Indy links put you into a loop like that Next Gen episode where they play the same poker game six times. So here's the story spread out with that strange formatting glitch that makes it look like an advanced form of poetry.

Desmond finds his birthday coverage isn't OK!
By Louise Jury Media Correspondent
22 December 2001
Richard Desmond may have made millions by giving C-list stars the OK! treatment. But the nine pages of soft-focus sycophancy the magazine dedicated to its owner was just not good enough for him.

Having graduated from Asian Babes to OK! and then to the Express newspaper titles, Mr Desmond is anxious to be taken seriously as a media baron. Hence his concern over the spread that appeared in OK! to mark his 50th birthday party at The Roundhouse in north London which showed him mingling with daytime television stars and ageing disc jockeys. He was not pleased with what he saw.

Now it appears that the OK! journalists deemed responsible for undermining their proprietor's new image – Jim Maloney, the magazine's deputy editor, and four others – have paid with their jobs.

One source said: "Basically he didn't communicate how he wanted his birthday to be covered and he wasn't happy with the final lay-out and complained to the editor. He wanted to look more like a media baron."

Another said: "He was unhappy with it, and his reaction whenever he's unhappy is to say 'There are too many staff here'."

Mr Maloney, who was not even involved in the coverage of the party, has been dismissed in what the company is describing as a "private contractual dispute". Four other members of staff have found themselves redundant.

A spokeswoman for Richard Desmond gave a succinct "no comment", though sources at the magazine point out that there has been a wide review of costs across his media interests with job cuts as a consequence. OK!'s editor, Nic McCarthy, has survived.

The OK!-five may have been better off had they followed the example of a colleague from another part of the Desmond empire.

The Daily Star columnist Jono Coleman, another guest at the birthday bash, wrote of his proprietor: "Boy does he know how to throw a party!"

He is still in work.

Oh. It didn't have the glitch. Never mind, got to go and get into a Christmas frenzy. Bye.

Unbending Virtue.

I wish I had not made two separate links to Instapundit in one paragraph earlier this afternoon. Not that the stories linked were uninteresting, but in juxtaposition with the discovery that my name has appeared in the Prof's left hand column, my two mentions look so... I don't know... grovelly. I didn't know, honest guv. Being a regular visitor to Instapundit I don't usually have cause to scroll down that far. Curses! I've gone and done it again. Reynolds eats babies. Take it from me.

I am a cat.

I send a purr and one of those endearing head-butt nuzzly things to a certain person. Thank you. Prrrrrrrrrr.

The Emperor Caligula

, in the early years of his reign when he was still sane and fairly popular, lay ill unto death with the fever. Fervent protestations of devotion being then the custom, leading citizens of Rome hastened to the temples and publicly beseeched great Jove to take, if he would, their humble lives, in exchange for that of the Emperor. Caligula recovered. Some years later, by now being completely mad, Caligula remembered that the men who had offered their lives were still untidily walking around. He became nervous that the Gods might think this an affront and take his life after all. Therefore he sent round a polite note thanking each man who had so patriotically offered his life, and inviting him to make good the pledge and kill himself sharpish.

I just thought that was a nice anecdote. That tips jar does work, you know.

"Where are the brain police?"

asks Little Green Footballs regarding the Kenneth Hearlson case. Also cited by Instapundit and scornful and incredulous bloggers worldwide. Smile, Orange Coast College. We gonna make you famous.

Talking of Instapundit , the Prof has a word of thanks to us Brits for loyally visiting New York in order to boost its economy and morale. Perhaps it is my customary pre-Christmas depression, but I can't help wondering if the surge in visitors merely means a good many of my countrymen are ghouls.

Stop it, woman. That was grumpy even for me. It's true that the best of friends can have make room for a bit of the ghoul intermixed with their benevolence; as La Rochefoucauld said, "We are easily consoled for the misfortunes of our friends if they give us the chance to prove our devotion."

Remember, elitist lackeys of the ruling class

: NuLab is not going to like you now or ever. Oxford and Cambridge better look out, according to this Indy article telling them off for having the lowest drop-out rates and recommending that some more tax money be spent to reward institutions who lose more of their students, thus creating employment for needy writers of editorials. The article asks,

Is it time for a homily on the need for the feckless lower orders to knuckle down to some serious hard work? We think not.

Dear brothers and sisters, I think so. "Feckless" is an indelicate phrase, but if anything it is too mild to describe those trained since infancy that dependence will be cosseted, violent outbursts praised, and hard work mocked. Have you ever taught in a school in a deprived area? I have, and I shiver to recall that the kids in my school were by no means the worst. By now a small subset of my charges will be at University and no doubt dropping out the minute their Media Studies minder gives them anything less than a B. Poor souls. Their teachers, including me, were so pathetically grateful that they did any work at all, that the kids were accustomed to be praised to the skies for merely putting pen to paper.

But rather than slag off those who have made some effort to educate themselves, even if they never did look beyond the warm fug of "entitlement", which will rarely fire the heart enough to keep anyone going when things are tough, I'd rather denounce their masters and trainers. Deep breath, get ready, and.... aah, no. I've said it all before.

Let's take a different tack. Does all this make any of you think I am a middle-class bloodsucker myself, whose selfish class interest makes me hostile to the poor getting an education? Then consider this. I think future lawyers, doctors and accountants should be ashamed to pay for their own education with money extorted by government force from their future cleaning ladies, hairdressers, and the men who will make their nice cars. Slightly less ashamed with loans than grants, but still ashamed.

Yet another Lord of the Rings review

, this time from Simon Jenkins of the Times.. It's a fine piece, but with one oddity, which Jenkins wisely attributes to a theoretical critic rather than himself:

A critic might protest at young people being told they need only rub the ring, summon the stone or touch the mark and the Wraith Riders thundering overhead will pass them by. Salvation lies outside themselves, if they will put themselves in the power of magic. Anthropologists hold that such beliefs lie deep in the cultural gene, periodically transformed into religion, to be ritualised and cleansed by social institutions. It is then welded to such humanist virtues as loyalty, bravery and companionship, much on display in these films. But what if religion fails and faith declines? The message is of a reversion to a darker, more primitive past, to the realm of magic.

Tolkein, a devout Roman Catholic, had the would never have made that mistake. Of course he would indeed say that salvation lies outside oneself, but never in a million years would it lie in the deathly ring - in fact the dreaded Wraiths home in on he who puts it on.

Al-Qaeda airlift

. Samizdata had this ages ago, but now the rest of the world has caught up. This story was on the US Daily Report roundup, but originates from Debka. It's a pity so many of them got away (not that I entirely believe Debka's figures, or their tale of deep-laid plans, though you can bet the Guardian will), but perhaps it won't turn out too badly. The key difference - I hope - between this daring escape of defeated troops and Dunkirk is that those leaving Afghanistan will carry memories of being hated. The people who receive them will regard them as an embarrassment.

Horribly burnt, thank you.

The fish fingers, I mean. But carbon is good for the growing appendix. Tim Blair, Beast of the Night, just sent me an e-mail, concerning strange doings of the Blogavarian Illuminati that I cannot yet reveal. I asked him what he was doing up at five in the morning. He said it was only four a.m. not five at all. Poor man, if he's still chained to his keyboard in the small hours perhaps it's not surprising that he and the Quasipundit team are hoping to retire from writing blogs themselves in order to merely survey them. But we can't have that. Let us add one more to all the charitable appeals that are flying around in this happy season: The Let's Keep Blair and QuasiPundit In Miserable Servitude appeal.

Iain Murray confirms

it was not The Edge of England's Sword that struck off the adverts from this blog. In actual fact it was a kind gentleman from New York. Although, since he heads his e-mail "Aw shucks, ma'am. Tweren't nothin'", perhaps he has some Southern ancestry too. Iain says he's going to go and purge the commercial dross from Libertyblog instead. Do you all mind just going to the side for the links, 'cos the kitchen timer's going.

War by other means

. Momma Bear sent me this virus warning. Read the last paragraph.

Memento mori, and let's hope the Euro is mortal too

. This rather upbeat Times article on why we should not necessarily lie down under the wheels of the Euro juggernaut is pretty good in its own right (though I did not see that the reference to Star Trek actually shed any light on the situation), but is a cause of embarrassment to me since it reveals that the fluid Peter Hain is actually Minister for Europe. Thank you, one and all, for your restraint in not correcting me immediately. So what was he doing talking about Afghanistan, then? Does he think it's in Europe? Were the rest of them drunk, and he was the best the Beeb could drag out into daylight for an interview? Was I drunk and the best the Beeb could drag out for an audience?

Returning hastily to the point, I'm just warping over to the day before yesterday's Guardian to see if they really do think that a poll saying 62% of Britains think the Euro is inevitable means that 62% of Britons are happy about it. TTFN.

Hi. Back again. Here's the Guardian story. If avoids by a whisker directly conflating "62% believe euro to be inevitable" and "62% believe euro to be desirable", but does talk blithely about a "new mood". Personally I am less optimistic than the Times writer. Few do rise up to fight what they believe to be inevitable. A little flicker of rage burns inside me that, after all their talk about decentralisation and democracy and empowerment, these people are quite happy when it suits them to steamroller over what even they admit most people want, but the little flame soon is extinguished. The cynical assumption in the Guardian story that people's beliefs simply follow the winning side is frequently true as well as cynical.

But the best hope may well be in the observation that, as the Times predicts, people will observe Britain outside the Euro and the sky unfallen yet. Then, like Chief Vitalstatistix who also feared the sky falling, they can come out from under their shields and get down to some serious feasting.

Finally, isn't the parallel currency idea reminiscent of one of John Major's sallies of many years ago? He proposed, to universal derision, that the Franc, the Mark and so on all be legal all over Europe and fight it out. It would be interesting to hear from him now.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus (just don't mess with him, OK.)

Or he'll pull a gun on you according to this Reuters story from Brazil.

Peter Hain,

on TV the other night said "I find this claim incredulous." To think that once he was the darling of the Young Liberals and had cool stuff happen to him like being arrested for a bank robbery. This man is now Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Something Military. Incredible, I call it.

Caesar, thou art mortal.

To make a few more echoes in a series of blogs about bloggers, I will just observe that

• I have been counting the doubloons for several days now regarding the Nobel Prize, the Hugo, the Nebula, the Lenin prize for Literature, and the Pedigree Chum Challenge, all of which I regard as "in the bag" thanks to the efforts of Random Jottings. I know the convention in these things is to sail serenely on and pretend to be surprised at the ceremony, but, hey, y'know, the secret's out since I went to get measured for my glittery dress.
• a benefactor whom I do not yet have authority to name says he, not Iain Murray, was the one who expelled the adverts from above my blog. Thank you, friend.
• Now I can reveal all! I am really Jonah Goldberg, scourge of Sammy's Data. (This is not true. I am as mystified as everybody else.)

Ansary psyched out.

Reader Richard Aubrey chimes in with several hypotheses as to the mental set up of Elf-Friend Ansary. This was the most interesting:

...just to pshrink a guy who's down, how about this?
He's a writer of children's books, right?
Do the protagonists of his books know all they need to know in advance of their needing to know it? And if not, what are the consequences? Betcha--although I haven't the slightest idea of checking this out--there are no negative consequences.
So, by combining his excessive mental time in the world of the blessed and virtuous ignorant to whom nothing bad happens from their ignorance, and the possibility he's absorbed the same view from the graying ex-campus wonders who went around proclaiming their innocence with wide-eyed "oh, wow" at yet another example of The System's horrors, Ansary believes there's such a thing as knowing too much.

Unfair? Based on no evidence? Yes, but no worse in either respect than the theory that Bush wants to take over the world.

[Later note: this came out sounding like I didn't like Mr Aubrey's theory. Actually I love it. Just the right note of creative extrapolation from the tiniest premises that Leo Abse MP struck when theorizing on Margaret Thatcher's Oedipus complex from the absence of information about her father in her entry in Who's Who. Judging from his name, Mr Aubrey is carrying on the tradition of his Norman forbears and hoisting the evildoers with their own thingies.]

As Cunning As A Cunning Fox That Holds The Chair of Cunning At Oxford University.

That sneaky motherless so-and-so Obvious Who You're Related To, Sunshine set me up.

Being a wily (and unfair) person, I held something back from my original piece. I was storing it in case somebody accused me of being mean to Ansary, and of misrepresenting him as anti-American.

It is the Tamim Ansary Email of Total Shame, a follow-up to his original letter, and it appears (bizarrely) at the website of folk singer Rickie Lee Jones (which also features contributions from Jimmy Breslin and John Pilger).

So. This man Ansary pretends to be Gepetto the Toymaker to the world while really saying things like,

"I see people out on the street, it's like they are going to a football game. Hooray, honk for the flag. I wonder if they'll be honking when their kids, their neighbors kids, and peoples kids they don't know are laying dead on some rocks somewhere because Bush wanted to take over the world under the opportunity of attacking the elusive terrorists"

Gad, that's sickening stuff, and not just his taste in music. But no, Blair, I won't efiskerate him: I have other fish to fry. Namely, you. Since you're so flipping clever, since you're so ready with Plan B, why don't you...
Cue ominous music. Shot of good folk looking up from their drinks.

...why don't you...
Crescendo. Awful silence falls, broken only by dramatic counterpoint of happy burbling from one remaining oblivious drunk.

...why don't you come over here and...
Barkeep reaches under bar for pacifier. Will she say the fatal words? Tension unbearable. Close-up on hand reaching to concealed holster...

...why don't you COME OVER HERE AND WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT?

Winona why she was born.

Borges wrote of a worthless and venal man, whose life was justified (had he but known it) by his being the inspiration for Shakespeare's Shylock. Last week I didn't know who this Winona woman was - but she has not lived in vain, having caused this inspired urine-extraction by Andrew Hofer.

Ever wonder what stirs up the most e-mails to this blog?

Not gun rights. Not the European Union (spit.) Not Osama Bin Laden. Not even the sewing. No, it's the exact meaning of the word "petard". ALL RIGHT. Petard (n)= (1) small engine of war used to blow in doors etc., charged with powder and fired by a fuse. (2) a kind of firework that explodes with a loud report. (3) certain forms of cheating at dice.

I did not have the slightest idea of any of this. Now I have to put up with lectures from my nearest and dearest about the Churchill Petard, a spigot fired demolition mortar, deployed by the 79th Division during Operation Overlord. Haven't I suffered enough? Stop, please stop. And no more, pretty please about the exact meaning of the word "drag" in American parlance either.

The Edge of England's Sword

has sheared the adverts from the head of my blog rather as one of Cromwell's boys might have sheared the gaudy head of a Cavalier from his shoulders. Though as a capitalist chick I raised no great objection to the ad, I must admit it looks more aesthetic without. Thanks.

Tamim Ansary and the real T. Blair.

I still think he can come over here and oppress us any time, but Tim Blair is being unfair to Tamim Ansary, he of the September 12 e-mail that snowballed around the world. Mr Blair correctly points out that Mr Ansary was way wrong about a lot of things:

TA: "We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age. Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already. Make the Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses? Done. Turn their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done. Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too late. Someone already did all that."

TB: There was never any intention to "bomb Afghanistan back to the Stone Age", nor to target schools or hospitals. The schools are now full of female students, for the first time in five years. Female doctors have returned to the hospitals. Wrong, Ansary.

And Right, Blair. It's true that Ansary's latest article in Salon suffers from a lack of proper perspective about how very much worse things so easily could have been - but, c'mon, the sentiments about letting change in the role of women evolve from within are decent enough. And it's not an article about precision bombing; it's about how Kabul differs from the Afghan hinterland. One can't just append "And finally, Thank You, United States Air Force" to everything you write, like a benign Delenda Est Carthago. When it comes to Ansary's original e-mail, though, it would be charitable to remember the date that he wrote it: September 12. On the night of September 11 I visited The Guardian's talkboard - yes, I did say the Guardian, where neo-Syndicalist yoghurt weavers go to die - and I saw stuff there that made my blood run cold. There was an entire thread headed "Extermination of the Afghani people". It was discreetly removed a few days later, but, believe me, it was there. Ansary didn't make up the widespread wish for the Afghans to be bombed into the stone age; he just heard it said any time he walked outside. To their credit, Bush & Co. never had any intention of mass slaughter; but we are in danger of forgetting that, by historical and worldwide standards, the relative restraint of modern democratic leaders is rare indeed. (My friends in Libertarian Alliance will be dusting out the bell, book and candle when they find out I said that. Not one of the three words "modern", "democratic" or "leader" brings out kind thoughts in a reactionary near-anarchist like me, but compare them to the kings of the past and dictators of the present.)

Also, remember the circumstances. Ansary did not expect to be famous. He expected, if I've understood right, less of an audience than I will get for this post. So it's not surprising he didn't hone every word and check every fact. So maybe he didn't have much of a clue about how accurate modern weapons can be; well I only began to get an idea of it during the Kosovo thing, and I'm interested in war. He was just one scared and miserable guy, who had just seen his country sink to being an instrument of Hitlerite evil and thought he was about to see it suffer the fate of Berlin.

It's been one of those days

. One heir to the Solent millions - well the heir to the Solent overdraft, to be honest - has been sick out of school with ragingly communist tonsils, and has been dragged hither and thither 'twixt quack and apocethary. The other heir has set up a great cry unto heaven over the prospect of missing the Pedigree Chum Challenge, until quelled by stern parental action: i.e. abject surrender, change of travel plans, ceding Danzig et al. (For those who don't know, the Pedigree Chum Challenge involves Thelwellian infants shouting at ponies. I very nearly made a joke here about one possible link between Pedigree Chum and superannuated ponies, but ever-mindful of the Chum legal team, I restrained myself.) Hence the absence of all those stimulating and deeply thought-out blogs I was going to write.

Instead all you get is a very old Matthew Parris column called "Ministers Pander to a Misguided Populace." But it's well worth reading, and it will soon disappear from the Times archives because the excellent Mr Parris is retiring as Parliamentary Sketchwriter.

Did the CIA get Osama Bin Laden to incriminate himself on that video?

When I saw the word "sting" in the headline I thought, huh. Might have known those Guardian self-hating twits are trying to make out its a fake, teee-yipical. I was being unjust. It's far more interesting than that, and looks plausible to me. So here's the story. If they're right, I wonder what Mr Al-Ghamdi's future prospects are?

Pora Tora Bora day.

(Warning: clicking the Independent links in this post seems to get you into some sort of loop where the backwards arrow just takes you to the same story again. In order to escape the Independtoid Universe you have to press the X button top right. So only click the links if you wish to kick the dust of this blog off your sandals. Anyway the Independent has this story on how Tora Bora fell "with surprising speed." One of these days, before they disappear completely and we lose the opportunity, we must all get round to stopping being surprised at the speed with which Taliban/Al Quaeda fall. Hoo boy, that Rumsfeld doesn't mince words, does he? "Fortunately," he says with obvious relish, after saying that the WTC is still burning, "the caves and tunnels at Tora Bora are burning as well."

An internal link from the story above leads you to this Bruce Anderson piece describes a new mood in the US of reluctance to wait around for their dear allies in Europe. It has a great anecdote about US foreign relations:

Once or twice I mentioned something which Julian Amery told me years ago. "Would you rather be America's friend or America's enemy?" he had enquired of one Arab ruler. There was a pause, and then came the answer. "An enemy. America often appeases its enemies. It always betrays its friends."

The Americans to whom I quoted Lord Amery's remarks always gave the same reply: "Do not worry. Those days are over."

Hoist by my own petard*

Me and my big mouth. Of course the dude noticed. I only just noticed that all his links to "The Predator", "King Kong" etc. lead to well known blogistas. I know I'm as guilty as the rest, but this is getting out of hand. In accordance with the rules of war any links found flying false flags from now on will be taken out and Blairized like this poor sap D'Hage who has been masquerading as a military expert down under.

*It's a type of pulley, I believe.

The Instadude wars continue

. Brian Linse of AintNoBadDude bravely surmounts the trauma of being forced to impersonate Dawson.com (though he may relapse once he notices that I had a sportive link to Thomas the Tank engine from his name the other day) and takes on the Prof again. This time the issue is a loophole in the laws about buying guns at gun shows: Mr Reynolds is for opening the loophole wider and Mr Linse for closing it. I have to say, Dude, that you might not talk so freely about "non-existent" slippery slopes if you lived in the UK. Another perspective that a non-American like me can bring to the gun law debate is... who cares what the Supreme Court or the US constitution says?

OK everyone, calm down. I didn't really mean it quite like that. The US Constitution is a magnificent document and has brought great benefits to mankind. The decisions of the Supreme Court obviously have a profound effect on what happens in the US and the rest of the world. But one reason that the best American writing in favour of the right to bear arms comes from blacks, Jews and women is that these groups don't even try to derive their rights from "nine old men" or a bit of paper, however admirable.

A Hazlenut Alpen Krispie-pop for Teacher.

I unaccountably missed Mr Pellerito's take on teacher certification in Libertyblog last Thursday - but don't worry, he put it in the fridge for us and it's still nice. I had my own rant about this in Right Now! magazine a few months ago. He also brings tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and jooouiy: the latest triumph of capitalism is here, and it's self-dial breakfast cereal.

Tony and Cherie Blair rub mud on each other's bodies, emit primal yowls and pray to strange gods

. I had intended to take a Sunday off from blogging and devote the day to ironing used wrapping paper, panicking about whether I have inadvertently sent Christmas cards to dead people, and other wholesome family pursuits. But the propagation of stories like this cannot possibly be described as work; it is pure, pure pleasure.