Category: Current Affairs

As the death toll of US service personnel in Iraq touches 2,000 (and, of course the death toll of Iraqis is much higher), the New York Times has a long piece profiling some of the families of the dead.

Dialogue at the breakfast table, with David Davis on Today in the background:

Tom: What are they talking about now?
Me: There’s going to be an election, and they’re talking to one of the people who’s in it.
Tom: Oh no, not again! (pause) Like in Vote for Duck?

The London Review of Books has two excellent articles by Ian Gilmour, one from post-election 2001, and one on the Tory leadership race of today. .

A good result in the High Court today. Shareholders in the collapsed rail network company Railtrack lost in their bid to sting the taxpayer for millions of quid. And the lesson is: sometimes, when the Government says there isn’t a state guarantee, there isn’t. Deal with it. Move on.

Ten famous Belgians? Hah! Here’s twenty!.

The BBC recalls a pioneering programme aimed at South Asian immigrants, that aimed to explain to them the mysteries of British life, and how to make themselves feel at home. It ran from 1965 to 1979. Is something similar needed today?

Another election in Poland, this time for the presidency, and Le Figaro reports that support for dissidents in Belarus and Ukraine has become a campaign issue.

The Tory conference was way more interesting than normal this year, because they were trying to find a leader. What it most reminded me of was the last day of the Premiership season this year.

Readers with good memories will recall that Norwich City went into the day with their fate in their own hands – a win would have guaranteed they stayed up, no matter what anyone else did. However, they got stuffed 6-0 at Craven Cottage, and suddenly they were back slugging it out in the pack. Meanwhile, West Bromwich Albion, bottom of the table at Christmas, and bottom on the last day, scored an unpredicted 2-0 win at Pompey which – in combination with other results – kept them up and saw Soton, Norwich and Palace relegated.

So, given reports from the bookies, is David Cameron the West Brom of the Tory leadership race? David Davis is certainly the Norwich City, having gone down like a copy of the Morning Star after a lacklustre speech. David Cameron, after a storming Rob Earnshaw performance, is now the bookies’ favourite.

It’s up to Tory party members to make the choice, though their track record is not great. However, Cameron, for all his Eton-and-Oxford life, seems much more like a potential Blair figure than Davis, and doesn’t have the undying hatred of Tory party members to live with, unlike Ken Clarke.

So, is the Tory leadership race like the Premiership? Well:

• It goes on for ages
• It used to be very clubby and aristocratic, but is now much more glitzy
• There’s a lot of excitement as it builds to a climax
• It happens all over again next year.

More on that last point, a lovely quotation from Tom Paine.

Mr. Burke, on the contrary, denies that [the right to choose a government] exists in the nation, either in whole or in part, or that it exists anywhere; and, what is still more strange and marvellous, he says: “that the people of England utterly disclaim such a right, and that they will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes.” That men should take up arms and spend their lives and fortunes, not to maintain their rights, but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery, and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke.

And of course, of Mr Leigh.

The ever-excellent slacktivist discusses the public response to a prison scandal in Delaware (summary of response: they were in prison, they deserved what they got). Slacktivist comments:

The attitude expressed in such letters is as popular as it is morally repugnant. This popularity is both dismaying and baffling. Letters like this express contempt for the Constitution as though such contempt were patriotic — as though the Bill of Rights were some kind of threat to the American way of life.

It’s not just in Delaware. The Cornerstone group (traditionalist Tories) have put out their platform, which includes not merely the repeal of the Human Rights Act, but also withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. Because, of course, this human rights nonsense is just the invention of liberal elitist New Labour types, right?