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Friday 17 July 2009

Len Freeman | 16:49 UK time, Friday, 17 July 2009

Here is Gavin Esler with details of Friday's Newsnight and Newsnight Review

Quote for the Day

"What we seem to be witnessing in Iran is the first spasm of the death agony of the Islamic Republic" - Writer Martin Amis.

In tonight's programme - we will be trying to figure out if Martin Amis is right - especially in the light of comments by the former President Rafsanjani today which may well stir the Persian political pot.

But we'll be leading on the fight against swine flu. How well are we doing? How much can really be done? Why do we have so many cases in Britain - is it because we are simply better at reporting it than other countries? Our Science Editor Susan Watts reports from one of the hot spots, Birmingham which has important lessons for the rest of the country.

And in Newsnight Review - we'll be examining the flipside of the American Dream. The latest Thomas Pynchon novel - Inherent Vice - has at its heart a spaced out private eye, Doc Sportello, who smokes so much weed it is not entirely clear what he's investigating. Plus we'll have the Oscar contender Frozen River, about the smuggling of illegal immigrants over the Canadian border; the latest Adam Curtis documentary It Felt Like a Kiss which explores in typical Curtis style part of our love-hate relationship with the United States; and the great American novel, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath - but how well does it adapt to the stage?

The academic and critic Sarah Churchwell, historian Dominic Sandbrook, and the writer and London Correspondent for The Nation DD Guttenplan are with me. Plus Martha will be at a rather rainy Latitude festival in Suffolk with some guests of her own to assess the state of the British festival scene. With three cabinet ministers due to turn up there this weekend, has it all got a bit tame?

Gavin

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    tony blair/gordon brown/cambell/mandy/nulabour/politicians/judges/barristers/lawyers = VOMIT

    dunno about u i am sick of sick, it makes me sick (sic) or am i sick

  • Comment number 2.

    Swine Flu was planned a long time ago. Watch this clip from 60 Minutes (a US program like Newsnight)
    then ask why all anti vaccination comments were pulled from the Times web page yesterday. Will you publish this?

  • Comment number 3.

    "Plus Martha will be at a rather rainy Latitude festival in Suffolk with some guests of her own to assess the state of the British festival scene. With three cabinet ministers due to turn up there this weekend, has it all got a bit tame?

    Gavin"

    Well I guess if turns into a Middle Class Graduate Unemployed mudbath,
    the '3 Cabinet ministers' involved can flee to Tolpuddle in Dorset for
    sanctuary and a burst of Billy Bragg .....? Just a helpful suggestion!


  • Comment number 4.


    Gordon Brown announced yesterday, that the Government has ordered 60 million doses of the H1N1 flu vaccine, enough to vaccinate everyone in the UK. What he has neglected to mention is what would happen to the UK's vaccine supply if the H1N1 strain mutates and becomes more severe than it currently is.
    The UK has no vaccine manufacturing facility within the country and is solely dependent on supplies manufactured in Europe by GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Baxter International Inc., whose production plants are in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. These three countries have a combined population of over 100 million.
    If the H1N1 virus becomes more virulent before the UK's delivery of vaccine has been produced and delivered, it is not conceivable that the political establishment in these production countries would allow vaccine to be exported to other countries before first inoculating their own populations; if they did there would be total anarchy. Just like any contract I have ever seen I am sure that the vaccine producers have a get out clause which will allow them to divert pre ordered doses to their own population.
    A recent news item stated that the production process of producing the vaccine has proved to be not as successful as was hoped, adding even more pressure to the supply chain. In past years these manufactures have had serious difficulty in producing enough vaccine to support the regular Global flu season, so what are the chances that they will be able to produce sufficient quantities of the regular flu season vaccine and enough H1N1 vaccine to inoculate the world's population. The production of flu vaccine requires a lead time of about six months before the season begins; assuming the production of the H1N1 vaccine was started within a month of the Mexico outbreak in May the first vaccine would not be available until November.
    We have been told that we will receive our first vaccine doses at the end of August, and the first sector of the population to receive it will be members of essential services, Doctors, nurses, police, fire, government etc. From this fact we are looking at around 5million doses, if we extrapolate these figures for just the European Union which has a population of 1/2 a billion people it would require a minimum of 35 million doses off the top just to keep essential services running. If we add the 100 million doses the three countries that produce the vaccine, will need to protect their own population we are looking at 135 million doses required before the public see one dose for themselves. This figure does not even take into account the 300 million doses ordered by the USA
    The point is we are not being told the truth, the numbers just don't add up. We as a population are being fed this Pandemic in bite sized sound bites. The effect to the Worlds already weak economy will be catastrophic. Our only hope is that the N1H1 virus becomes no more virulent than it already is, because the alternative is something I don't even want to consider.

  • Comment number 5.

    Bigoted old soaks are setting the news agenda for our state broadcaster!

  • Comment number 6.

    "What we seem to be witnessing in Iran is the first spasm of the death
    agony of the Islamic Republic" - Writer Martin Amis."


    Just like the events in China in June 1989 were the death agony of the Chinese Republic?

    Some of these foreign disturbances are a) contrived for theatrical (albeit deadly) purposes and b) not at all what they appear to be to many in the Liberal-Democracies.

    Whilst it's 'good' to read what Mr Amis has to opine about the modern world, it would be even better if you fielded a few who were a little more astute/informed, as some think it might be more accurate to assert that we are now seeing the death agony of and its predatory 'economics'.... ;-)

  • Comment number 7.

    Further to post #3:

    Memo to Sir Richard Dannett - this is a Cabinet Minister free-zone!
    NB Bring your own boots.
    >
    "Organised by the TUC, this festival takes place in the village of Tolpuddle, Dorset and takes place from Friday 17th until Sunday 19th July.

    The line for Friday includes Urusen, Who's Afear'd, and Jigsaw.

    The Saturday music line-up includes RSVP, Radio Gagarin, 6 Day Riot, Chancery Blame & the Gadjo Club, Trotsky's Talkin Blues Buro, The Marxist Magician, and Dublin City Workingman's Band. Saturday starts with an Open Mic area hosted by Dave Toomer from 11am, plus Poetry and Politics, Speakers' Corner with host Tim Lezard will invite stall-holders and anyone else to have their say. Then at 1pm there's the Tolpuddle talent open-mic session with host Graham Moore. Unions 21 Debate, and The UNISON Unizone with Blackdown Samba. Bristol Radical History Group offer up a subversive mix of narrative, music and performance. Look out for feisty farm labourers, incendiary milk maids and radical cobblers, all compered by the legendary hero of the deep country, Captain Swing.

    Sunday's acts inclue Rev Hammer, Gris Sanderson and the Harpaphonics Ensemble, Alun Parry Band, David Ferrard, The Clay Faces, Raices Cubanas, Southern Tenant Folk Union, Transglobal Underground, Alun Parry & Robb Johnson, and Billy Bragg. Sunday also has the procession led by the Great Western Jazz Band with Cuban band Paseo Malanga, Blackdown Samba, and Eastington Colliery Band, and speakers including Brendan Barber TUC General Secretary, Shelia Bearcroft TUC President, and of course Tony Benn. Budding young DJ, Top of the Tips will be providing workshop sessions on a solar powered DJ rig in the Kids Area. Check the chalkboard by the gate for times on the day.

    In and around the Martyrs Marque at the festival there will be stalls selling ideas as well as goods. Plus there will be fun and workshops for kids and creative adults.

    Entrance to the festival is FREE. Weekend camping tickets are available for purchase."


  • Comment number 8.

    A BAD ATTACK OF GREATNESS

    I have always found Martin Amis to be far too busy with SOUNDING right, and PERFORMING as if right, to bother with the arduous business of actualLy BEING right. He is truly redolent of Vogon Poetry. I suspect large intestines will be leaping up though necks to strangle brains, all over Britain. Why always the usual suspects?

  • Comment number 9.

    Just a quick post before NN. if they show a distribution of Swine Flu, look at the distribution. South and Midlands.

    If you recall it came to Scotland first then numbers increased. I thought this was strange, as we had just had a spell of hot weather.

    The last month or more the weather has been pretty indifferent here. But watching the weather forecasts it has been hotter down south. I mean really 'down south' (Edinburgh is down south for me).

    Have we got a hot weather adapted flu virus? Sorry I can not find anything to support my hunch.

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 10.

    I imagine it wont be long before the 'hidden hand' that works at the edge of the establishment makes its move in finding Gordon Brown a secluded spot.

  • Comment number 11.

    What?

    Paul Mason used the Jungian psycho drama. Well if Jung is good enough for Mason.

    Also a Doors sound track? NN used the Doors for the backing for the Oleg Deripaska special on Tuesday. Click this

    /blogs/newsnight/fromthewebteam/2009/07/tuesday_14_july_2009.html

    It's comment 14 from Tuesday.

    Paul try relating Kondratiev waves



    With Jung's Civilisation in Transition.



    If you understand the thermodynamic relationship between the two. The you will understand that Double Dip recession can be understood so easily.

    /blogs/newsnight/fromthewebteam/2009/07/thursday_16_july_2009_1.html

    No need to write untrue things like:

    "Our Economics Editor Paul Mason will be looking at the big problem that nobody knows the answer to: the double dip recession."

    PS it was me who advised Greenpeace prior to taking co-promotion of Glastonbury. Seems the 'copies' have forgotten my original work.

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 12.

    #10 Cookie Ducker

    I am having to agree with you. Adam Smith's appendage may just be approaching when push comes to shove off.

    Now that we are discussing future tactics in Afghanistan in the open media. Every shoulder rocket launcher available on the international black market will be in Helmand by Sunday. Long term career advice would be don't fly in or pilot helicopters in Afghanistan.

    Unless it's all some contrived double bluff, smokescreen in the psychological war of deception. And the real strategy is some barm pot scheme to have trained mice to drop ricin in the cous-cous of the Taliban.

    Bloody hell, two blacked out people carriers have pulled up outside full of very angry Gerbil's, with an invitation to meet Dr Kelly. One truth too far.

    Bye bye bloggers.....

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 13.

    Celtic Lion
    re: a couple of your postings from yesterday

    Oh, what a fitting reply
    When questions asked I
    Clangers, he says, to my moon and baboon
    We should be in touch again quite soon

    His matrix and my matrix, though different constructions
    In common they come to similar deductions
    We meet on the waves of thermodynamics
    Art, music, poetry, state economics

    P.S. Have you watched Leonard Cohen perfom in Liverpool? - available on u-tube

  • Comment number 14.

    #12 CL

    It's fine we sorted it out, they weren't Gerbils, they were Desert Rats.

    #13 Mimpromptu



    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 15.

    #13 Mimpromtu

    To get from Paul Mason using a Doors soundtrack. This is part of Awake, from American Pray or Ghost Song

    Shake dreams from your hair
    My pretty child, my sweet one.
    Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
    The day's divinity
    First thing you see.
    A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon

    Words by Jim Morrison



    Music by The Doors

    Moderators: I have used Paul Mason's Doors soundtrack and use of the work of Jung to connect back to the NN theme of the Moon landing and Mimpromptu's poetic postings.

    In particular I am focusing on Carl Jung's Civilisation in Transition. Here images archetypes emerge and rise from the collective unconscious. Here I am relating the present concern for the sustaining of the of the ecological systems of the planet, with the images of the moon landing 40 years ago. Most importantly the global appreciation of the Earth as a discrete whole entity, isolated in the infinity and eternity of space. It's protection is our protection and should take priority over such as the intangible unreality of increasing economic growth or war on other members of the collective community of our planet.

    I hope I have justified my use of words and music to illustrate a point which is in keeping with ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ House rules for posting of 3rd party material.

    My thanks

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 16.

    time to trash the bbc dream of vulgar executive excess?

  • Comment number 17.

    Celtic Lion
    What a reply! & sincere!
    Will try and respond when back from twirling.

  • Comment number 18.

    TRASH (#16)

    Lot of it about bookhim. I am in terminal cringe.

  • Comment number 19.

    #17 Mimpromptu

    ?

  • Comment number 20.

    This blog is sadly degenerating into a chat-line. If this continues, I expect quality posters to leave.

    This is rather like what is happening with respect to immigration Higher Education. :-(

  • Comment number 21.

    #20 JJ

    Worried about being left here on your own?

    Robert Pirsig had a problem with quality too, have a read of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

  • Comment number 22.

    KingCelticLion # various

    Just check out on the second track ( Year or a Day ) in the following link to understand where I get my environmentalist streak from.

  • Comment number 23.

    #19
    Celtic Lion
    Having now come back from twirling on ice, I'm ready for a chat.
    It's kind of exciting to have 'The Moon & Baboon' associated with Stanley Kubrick's 'Space Odyssey 2001' but, to be honest, the couplets begat themselves as a sonoric composition with the 'thoughts' popping out virtually within a few swift units of time. Reading into it, I can now see the connection you've made. I can also see now some Darwinism in it and, I suppose, a reflection of the romantic aspects of human perception of the moon. It all seemed, however, like an experience of some kind of verbal dance.
    On a more serious note, I'm not really into big economics nor have been too preoccupied with climate change, the way you are. I do believe in democratic capitalism as it seems best to reflect human nature allowing individuals to engage in entrepreneurial activities. Communism and dictatorial socialism is only a pretext for those in power to be well provided for and to have loads of money. Greed and the need to possess are inherent aspects of human beings. It has always been like that and is not likely to change. I think, however, that it is the role of the political and judiciary systems to keep capitalistic excesses under control allowing people to make, nevertheless, their own choices.
    Apart from art, music and dance, my big thing has always been the diversity of human perception reflected in interpersonal relations and, as a consequence, communication /which by now, without beating about the bush, has reached globally resonant proportions/.
    And here we come to the problem of being copied and used by others without due acknowledgement. We share it, Celtic Lion. Its being done to me right, left and centre. For example, I hardly manage to turn round and Gordon Brown and his cronies are on the case with words from my diary or ditties appearing in their announcements. This morning I read that Gordon had many, many talents. I wonder whether he writes poetic ditties. One thing he definitely is very good at is making u-turns. When first criticised, he insists everything is absolutely honky dory only having to bow under pressure and make the u-turn.
    Thank you Celting Lion for your attention and for the chats!
    May I suggest a couple of Mr Leonard Cohen's poetic songs? -


  • Comment number 24.

    #23
    Celtic Lion
    Have only now watched the twirling girl with a twirling batton. Absolutely amazing, almost unbelievable. Thank you so much.
    I'm nowhere near anything like that. I improvise twirling on ice with no professional help though am taking ice-skating lessons for other things, including spins.

  • Comment number 25.

    Brossen and Mimpromptu

    First I am sure whether I am permitted to reply, or whether you were permitted to post, under the new blog conditions that JJ appears to wish to apply. Though I took as NN were hosting the blog and in the top right corner it says " what's happening on the show, talking points, and more or less anything else that takes our fancy." There was an 'implied none restrictive format' as long as it conformed to house rules. That the moderators allowed these posting, I take it we have complied to the conditions of NN and the moderators.

    In addition I must express some reservations on JJs recommendations that we not be able to reply to other posters incase this could be construed as 'chat'. This seems to be to be a precursor of imposed isolationism, an imposed 'divide and rule'.

    Though I am unsure whether that was actually JJ posting. For one person to determine the 'quality' of another(s) post(s) or the inter connecting chain, would imply a qualitative assessment without reference to some datum of quantitative assessment of scientific rationale.

    As the 'real' JJ has constantly posted against 'opining'. Post #20 is clearly incompatible with that. Until otherwise informed, in applying the 'precautionary principle' I will have to assume the aforementioned post is a consequence of identity theft, though only one of a range of possible explanations.

    Brossen. Missed that one in my classic rock experience. In the context of this blog, which I realise I may have to stick to. The lines.

    "Seen from a height of a thousand miles the earth
    looks the same as it did
    How is it we can fly faster than day
    but we can't find the things we need"

    Resonate with me. It wasn't music, but Apollo 8 which took the picture of earth rising over the horizon of the moon. At the time this was different to the map on my wall. In reality countries did not exist, apart from in the mind of man. From space they could not be seen.

    At different times one line, one lyric, one image, one experience can alter our perception and value judgements of the world around us, from then and forever.

    The whole song we could discuss. It's that year and a day. I can only say I believe we have 3 years because I don't have the resources to run my whole Earth system models on a computer with all the data required. The politicians and media use only climate models. Which to me is absurd as saying a car has passed it's MoT if only the tyres have been checked. What about brakes, steering and suspension etc. Population, species extinction, pollution, war and conflict etc.

    #Mimpromtu

    Perhaps I could suggest, copying and pasting the next line in Google:

    celtic lion mimpromtu

    you have to do it that way, because I spelt your name wrong. Even though originally a quality control engineer at the highest level, I still make mistakes. But most often spot them.



    I will leave it there for now. You have written on other areas I would like to reply to. There is a duality. "I'm not really into big economics nor have been too preoccupied with climate change"

    Surely these are just an accretion, of much smaller even quantum level and below consequences, actions and decisions?


    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 26.

    #24 Mimpromptu

    Your chatting

  • Comment number 27.

    #24 Mimpromptu

    That's OK. I did post that I played bass in a band and had to dance the male lead in videos. Also that I did fight national level Karate once, and won my one and only fight in 10 seconds of the first round and have done kick boxing with special forces instructors. Which means nothing to those who have never done it. But it is really 4 dimensional chess and spatial awareness. And know I am the butt of jokes here for saying what experiences I have had.

    Though I am rubbish. I suppose I do have an 'eye'. I thought the girl was 'WOW' enough for me to post it for you. I am grateful for your reply.

    Now I am chatting. Good night. Sweet electric dreams.

    Celtic lion

  • Comment number 28.

    #24
    Celtic Lion
    You've spoilt somewhat your otherwise sincere reply by qualifying my potential dreams as 'elecric'. In reply I enclose a slightly modified part of my rhyming lines 'My Grandma and I':
    She wrote in her twenties, I in my fifties
    Despite the following copycat shifties

    Making my life a misery at times
    /Insisting its them wholl win over time/

    Idiotic robotic ideas they had
    Not able to grasp the invisible thread

    Stop smoking, stop thinking here we come
    Say via the ether, the pitiful scam

    Hiding and scheming behind this person and that
    Pretending it fits them Mr L Cohens hat


    Back harking to what wasnt to last
    Hopelessly trying to bring on the past

    Living by symbols and delusional game
    Isnt it time to appropriate their name?

  • Comment number 29.

    #28
    When copied and pasted, for some reason, apostrophes disappear and that is why there is a distinct lack of them in some of my postings.
    Re: Newsnight Review
    I'm glad Gavin Esler and 'friends' didn't get away with 'hand picking' just the gloom & doom aspects of the contemporary American dream although it's a shame nothing specific to the contrary has actually been mentioned.

  • Comment number 30.



    mimpromptu (#29) What's truly remarkable is that Newsnight Review covered the liberal arts and 'The Loss of The American Dream' but Newsnight itself didn't ever cover what warned about this in Feb 2007, i.e. well before the Credit Crunch of August 2007, despite much muttering about these parameters and trends in these blogs well before ETS broke their silence. It's been a matter of some concern for many years to those (which ETS referred to as 'the elites') who do research in this area. All the while, Newsnight was disingenuously asking its blog-readers what they'd like to see covered.... (see the Newsnight archive before the new format). Why? It's important to look into this omission as it explains why so much has gone worng I suggest. Focus on the hostility elicited in response to being instructed or told things which one does not like.

    Whether one thinks so or not, this point is important. To see why, spend several hours working through it to see for yourself.

    You might also ask if , or are they perhaps just 'useful idiots', Mr E. Miliband?

  • Comment number 31.

    On Lewington the "Waffen SS" would be bomber guy, has anybody tried to see if there are any links with Von Bruun?

    He was the American Friend of the BNP who had a conviction for trying to kidnap a Fed member and killed a Holocaust Memorial guard in the US.

    Also the South Africans may have an interest as some of the people who exited the country have a violent and murderous history with them.

    When you look at the pattern of lone, crazed far right would be bombers and shooters such as the paedophile and would be nail bomber last year are we really confident that they are acting alone?

    Perhaps people of the right psychological disposition are being recruited into a cooperative umbrella organisation to try and destabilise the democratic process with a view to other organisations reaping the benefit.

    If Lewington was carrying a device either it was to bomb or to give to the bomber.

    But perhaps it was just for gratification or because of the phases of the moon.

  • Comment number 32.

    Its good to see that the Lib Dems are pushing Labour for second with the Tories a wobbly first and the BNP are nowhere.

    The latter are a "modern and progressive party" and not a "Nazi Party".

    Many BNP posters on this page indicate that they would like to ditch democracy in favour of National Socialist ideals and they revere Hitler. Of course they are "agnostic" on the Holocaust.

    But then Nazis are a kind of amoral replacement aristocracy where ideology does not guide their intentions but is merely a tool to facilitate the pursuit of power.

    Ideology also acts as a justification for power where aristocrats would rely on the family tree.

    Hitler remains a quasi-religious icon and anybody who should point out that he was an evil murdering criminal is described as "an anarchist and Trotskyite" who "paints Hitler as darkly as possible for party political reasons".

    But actually the BNP aren't that much of a force to worry about in democratic terms as the vote they have is very soft.

    For instance the Euro campaign seemed to focus on the fact that they took children on a day trip (hopefully with nobody like the Hitler-loving Baby P batterer in charge) and they did not spy on people using council technology. They used a Spitfire on their literature.

    That really covers their genuine beliefs - the Cult of the Latter Day Haw Haws!

  • Comment number 33.

    #20 Jaded_Jean

    I think you may have mistake "quality" for "quantity".

    Frequently the "quantity" is taken up with your attempts to turn every topic into a Ladybird Book Of Far Right Ideology.

    The far right are always trying to pass themselves of as highly intellectual but there clearly is no substance.

    You will present arguments that there was no Holocaust while you maintain you are "agnostic" - but you won't take your arguments to the Djemjanjuk trial to show that if the Nazis committed no Holocaust there could be no crime.

    Neither will Irving go and neither will Griffin.

    That speaks volumes about your actual beliefs and intentions.

    It also speaks about your intellectual grasp as you try to say you are not positing a position that you know is unsustainable. It makes a reader suspect you know very well millions were murdered.

    Your views on the "Jewish Communist International" are laughable as you simply use somebody's race at a convenient point in your disposition as "evidence".

    But you are not an amusing character as your views on ending democracy, the BNP, eugenics, planned economics and so on show.



  • Comment number 34.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 35.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 36.

    Let Independents Be Heard !

    Norwich North, Independent Candidate, Bill Holden.



    (Future Radio is a community radio station for Norwich)

    I think he raises a valid complaint about his invitation.

    Who knows , with a fairer way for independents to be heard , they might 1) attract more voters to come out on polling day and vote 2) force the parties to raise their game !

    I think Barrie has championed these points many times.

  • Comment number 37.

    A VERY VALID POINT STEVE (#36)

    Once I had resolved to blow 500 quid and stick my head above the parapet in 2005, I set about trying to raise my profile in the meeeja. Not even the local paper cared a hoot. The election had not been declared - I was not news. Once it WAS declared, I had just a few weeks to make my pitch which was (for the avoidance of doubt)

    SPOIL PARTY GAMES.

  • Comment number 38.

    GO1: betting odds for the BNP to win/not win a seat/s at the next general election...



    Whilst your at it, can you comment on the Murderous campaigns of King Edward the 1st against the Welsh and Scots, or the Murder of some 70+ million chinese by that communist regime, or hows about a quick remark or two on the deaths attributed to Stalin....some 35+ million. From looking around history, it would appear Adolf Hitler was a bit of an underachiever in the mass murder stakes, which begs the question, why the selective and doubtless obsessive rants against only the Nazies?

    Also, Do you have an opinion on the Goldmans Sachs recent bonus payouts????

  • Comment number 39.

    As Go1 has brought the blog back to an issue that is of real and present concern to many NN posters (albeit with his usual obscure and repetitive comments) may I ask whether many were satisfied with the answers given by the (latest) Home Secretary to Andrew Marr's questions on his show this morning?
    A.M. "..talking about the population rising to over 70 million and immigration being a very, very large part of that. Does there come a point - and you're in charge of immigration policy - does there come a point where you say well actually we have enough people in this country, we don't want further large-scale immigration or indeed we don't want further immigration and we have to put a cap on it?"

    Home Sec's answer was a ludicrous analogy -
    "The door is closed under our points based system for the unskilled. The door can only be opened from the inside for those who are skilled"

    I am curently aware of a foreign student being offered unpaid employment on the basis of having no experience in the job, thus depriving a local person of employment.

    A.M "..quite a lot of people have been turning to parties like the BNP on this because they perceive that people from outside are getting a better deal and are taking British jobs for British workers... is that all got up by the BNP or do they have a point?"

    Home Sec's response was that "politicians have to speak to people in the language they can understand about the problems they are facing
    and successive mainstream politicians of all political parties have done that in this country, which is why we don't have the same problem with a Right Wing established group as they do in countries like France and Italy." Sounds rather patronising to me, and obviously inadequate for some one million who voted BNP last month.

    A.M. .."another problem raised in the papers today, which is that there are a group of 20 or so quite hardline Islamists who were sent to prison because of what they were doing, and they're now coming back out again and there aren't really proper controls on what they do once they're back out. There's clearly quite serious alarm about this."

    Home Sec's response "There are proper controls. The simple fact is anyone who's been sentenced to longer than 12 months is released on the ba when their sentence is complete."

    A.M. "They're staying in bail hostels, some of these guys."

    Home Sec: "But that's a good place for them because the place where they're staying, they stay under very strict conditions with very well trained staff. If they're foreign nationals, we'll send them back. Sometimes we can't because if we're sending them back to a country where there could be a death penalty, for instance, but we keep them under..."
    A.M: (over) "So they are securely supervised and watched?"

    Home Sec: "Very securely supervised, very closely monitored."

    Well, that's OK then, UK taxpayers bear the cost of high security accommodation, and the encouragement for others to try their luck, because the risk of hardline Islamists returning to their own country is of more concern than that faced by the GBP!

  • Comment number 40.

    #38 Cookie Ducker

    Don't forget Cortez in central America. For the gold he killed an empire, destroyed the Aztecs.

    Then there is the present Holocaust. 40,000 children die everyday just because they haven't access to clean water etc. That is 10,000,000 in 250 days. But that is 10,000,000 every 250 days. That's 30,000,000 in 2 years.

    Loggers are going into the forests of Central Africa and South America and what is it, cutting down an area the size of Wales every year. People are moved off their land.

    20% of all species of life will be gone in 20 years. The oceans are being poisoned by toxic chemicals, plastics and sedimentation from erosion caused by deforestation. Smoke drifts across the suface of the planet, visable from space. A brown cloud of pollution hangs over east Asia. Off the coast of Africa people hijack ships, because nothing grows where they live due to years of toxic dumping on the land by multi national companies finding the cheapest way to get rid of their poisons.

    People say how did the Germans allow the Nazis to do what they did. Look at what we are doing. We are part of the biggest Holocaust of all time.

    The uniforms is slightly different, the leaders now wear suits and ties. They no longer incite us to say Heil Hitler in a common bond of propoganda. They appear in the media and with the support of the media, and get everyone to believe that all these deaths and the destruction of the planet is acceptable, as long as it is in the best interests of their one and only masterplan. Increasing economic growth.

    Why? When the banks had a bit of a problem which their Reich, within days and weeks £ trillions were found to support the plan. They certainly get things done don't they.

    Every now and again the world will come together in some global fund raise to stop the children dying and the destruction of our one and only planet. They will raise a massive £80 million. Or they could have asked 6 of the top Goldman Sachs employees to donate their bonus without even touching their salary.

    I'm not saying Hitler wasn't a very naughty boy. But compared to the regime now. That's all he was.

    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 41.

    KCL #40

    I share your sense of grief and outrage. However, had those deaths quoted by you and cookieducker all been avoided/averted through the ages, would not the huge resulting exponential increase in world population by now have advanced even further the damaging effects on our planet attributed to the demands of mankind? Even reached the critical mass of extinction that you and others forecast?

    I'm certainly not advocating turning a blind eye to inhumanity; I am, in practice, a minimalist in many things, but there is an urgent need for our prime focus to be on sensible population control initiatives, without which nature will find its own means of control.

  • Comment number 42.

    'GOING MAD TO STAY SANE'

    I hope all you sages have read Andy White's book (it is now s/h at an inflated price). Written in '96 it is highly relevant to current world misery. Midas is rampaging round the globe and has not yet learned his lesson. perhaps he never will.

  • Comment number 43.

    #41 indignantindegene

    "I share your sense of grief and outrage. However, had those deaths quoted by you and cookieducker all been avoided/averted through the ages, would not the huge resulting exponential increase in world population by now have advanced even further the damaging effects on our planet attributed to the demands of mankind? Even reached the critical mass of extinction that you and others forecast?"

    Quite agree can't find fault apart from one tiny difference. That's all in the past though, and the situation is what we find ourselves with now. The bit I have to differ on is the final sentence.

    Like being bitten by a poisonous snake (an apt analogy from the bible). Having been bitten death will be certain unless the anti venom is administered. Or like catching flu. There is a lag, an incubation period, between infected and the manifestation of the symptoms.

    So in terms of planetary development we have already been bitten or infected. So in reality we have gone past the 'critical mass of extinction'. what we need to be doing is resolving a situation that is in the process of manifesting itself.

    'Loading' on the planet's ecological life support systems is based on as you say 1) Population and 2) the demands of that population, resource use pollution etc.

    Again you are right nothing has been done about population. But to compound the problem, using compound in a true context. The political economic establishment want us to increase consumption to overcome a minor problem in one sub system, the economic system.

    You are right to use the word exponential. An exponential in growth in population, then an exponential growth in consumption per head of population. Once we start adding exponentials together, once we start approaching a criticality, things get out of control very very quickly.

    Then as you correctly end with 'nature will find its own means of control.' Government's and media couldn't cope with a minor blip in the economic sub system. They certainly will not be able to cope with planetary ecological backlash. The initiation of that is already working it's way through the system, approaching the time of it's manifestation.

    When Apollo 13 had a problem with it's life support systems. They didn't sit back and do nothing. They shut down all not essential demands. We are on a slightly bigger ship and governments want to increase demand on failing life support systems. Madness!

    40 years on and they learnt nothing from the Apollo programme.

    Celtic Lion




  • Comment number 44.

    #40
    Celtic Lion
    A few months ago one of the bloggers linked you to JJ, Brossen99 and Barrie Singleton. I'm beginning to realise that they may have had a point. Disappointing. Ah, well, another down the drain. Stick with the naughty boys.

  • Comment number 45.

    INHUMANITY ARISES WHERE HUMANITY IS LACKING (#41)

    "I'm certainly not advocating turning a blind eye to inhumanity"

    But humans are getting ever less competent at being human. And inhumanity is rampant. In Britain, people are getting madder, if figures for consumption of molecules that suppress the symptoms are to be believed. I presume this is true for America (Oliver James' 'English speaking peoples'). So the two maddest nations are busy civilising the rest of the world. where might that lead?

    Laing said: "perhaps it is the way we are educating them that is driving them mad" (1974). Britain says: "Look! we have put all those Afghan girls into school - aren't we super?" Can't wait to see them 'manning' call centres run by war-lords.

    Cuck-coo!

  • Comment number 46.

    Here's one I read earlier! ; ) Leo what's your view. Anybody here tried it?

  • Comment number 47.

    #44 OOohhhh I like the thought of the "naughty boys" ! ; )

  • Comment number 48.

    A SIMPLER WAY (#46)

    I just eat everything I buy, Lizzie. It is only nutters who think you can't eat the same thing twice who need to throw stuff away. If my lettuce looks sad, I eat lettuce. Incidentally, just getting close to perfecting a semi-hydroponic lettuce technique.
    I keep sliced and stick bread frozen. You can make toast and fried bread direct from frozen state. Stick I snap and defrost. I'll eschew rather than chew bin food - thanks.

  • Comment number 49.

    #46 Ecolizzy

    Of course I've tried it. The amount of waste from those colleges when I had no money. Also now getting the timing right when thing get priced to 10p.

    #44 Mimpromptu

    I am certainly not down the drain. Writing provocatively makes people think. Wakes them up, stops them from sleep walking over the edge of the abyss.

    At least in the past I woke the Government up. Remember the stushi when the Chief Scientist gave global publicity to my work.

    If what I write is not in keeping with the mainstream media, perhaps the fault is not with me.

    You appear to be lacking in staying power. If you find it unpalatable to understand the avoidable death that is permitted to happen, deal with the cause, not the messenger.

  • Comment number 50.

    #47 Ecolizzy

    Steady on girl!!!

  • Comment number 51.

    #44 Mimpromptu and 47 Ecolizzy

    Hope these help



    or



    or



    Celtic Lion

  • Comment number 52.

    Celtic Lion
    not my glass of wine or pint of beer

  • Comment number 53.

    HISSY FITS

    indignantindegene (#39) I suspect you have it right. The CJS is not coping, in fact, the recent all but privatisation of the Probation Service along with restructuring of the Home Office due to it allegedly being 'unfit for purpose' (I suspect it was made so) is grist to your mill.

    There is a major problem all to do with class, but most poeole do not understand what class refers to, it just being a grouping process. Trying to get people to look at the problem from a respectable distance is, alas, all but impossible as most will not see how the electorate has effectvely provided a mandate for its own national dissolution. The exchange in the above link illustrates this strange situation I think. It is why so many MPs, journalists (and others) have what can only be described as 'hissy fits' when the BNP is mentioned. The fear for most of the concerned UK electorate is not about race, colour, creed etc, it's a fear of the UK becoming like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sub-Saharan Africa etc etc in terms of social instability. Ironically, many British Asians and Blacks probably share exactly the same fears!

    The 'Points System' has come a bit late given the Lisbon Treaty's FCHR and Mr Frattini's plan to welcome 20 million more into the EU from Africa and S Asia. I thought Griffin did quite a good job defending a very difficult position on the AM show a week ago.

  • Comment number 54.

    #48 I concur with everything you say Barrie. It seems to be a younger person thing, not to eat something slightly iffie. It's never done me any harm, although I am very careful about meat. Have you seen this man...

  • Comment number 55.

    #49
    Celtic Lion
    You do what you want, keep shouting, provocating, try and make people and governments react, I can't stop you nor would I want to bother. You have simply disqualified yourself from me making any further attempts to carry on chats with, i.e. another 'wild boy' down the drain.

  • Comment number 56.

    A thought on this... surely a lot of this increase in mortgages, is just people re-mortgaging on very low interest rates for the longer term. I don't think they are necessarily "new" mortgages or new house buying.

  • Comment number 57.

    #47 Ecolizzy



    Celtic 'Bad Boy ' Lion

  • Comment number 58.

    On a serious note this is a general blog. Posters may put things here that would be considered normal or central within their own discipline or community, but extreme to a mainstream audience.

    Personally I would consider a comparison of the deaths in WW2 with those at present related to economic policy and the environmental imperative an objective assessment.

    Though I must also draw attention to I did in 2002 make a comparison between the deaths involved in 9/11 and in environmental challenges. This was for a UN report commissioned by the UK Government. None took offence. Far from being censured it became internationally know.


    "Now a building could be destroyed and 3000 people lose their lives. A nuclear bomb has the the potential to kill a few million in a city.

    Unfortunately these are insignificant compared to the most awesome tool of mass destruction. Economic growth not integrated with its cost burden on social and environmental systems at all levels of its implementation, local, national and international.

    Its effects are indiscriminate drought, famine, flood, destruction of crops, fire. It is not millions, but 10's and 100's of millions who pay the price."

    Changing Futures 19/12/02 submission to UNED report.

    I feel we should not write at a lower level of sincerity here, just because it is only a '³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ blog', than we would do in any other area of our lives.

    Regarding comedy, Joan Rivers said if you can't get 2 people to walk out in disgust, you are not being challenging enough to the mainstream of your audience.

    Celtic Lion


  • Comment number 59.

    Is it Tom Is it Tam

    Well its Tom........Tom Watson

    What A Trooper

  • Comment number 60.

    The darling blair brown market (Mart) or The Wonderfull Black Market (mart)

    I'll Take the 2ND

  • Comment number 61.

    Memo 2 The Idiot

    If YOU Cant Supply Our People with The Right Stuff

    Bring The Boys Back Home. Dont Forget The Girls.

  • Comment number 62.

    ON SQUALID PEOPLE AND THEIR UNMENTIONABLES

    There are, , rather a lot of unmentionables which many dare not mention for fear of being called squalid.

  • Comment number 63.

    Time for another NN special or Panorama on population and waste?

    In the 1960/70s I carried out work studies on garbage collection and disposal in 2 London Boroughs and overseas, and advocated charging restaurants per sack of waste: this should now be at a punative rate for supermarkets. In those days most food waste was collected separately and proessed for pig-swill, but the government's knee-jerk re-action after the swine-fever outbreak last decade banned the practice rather than tighten regulation.

    As a confessed minimalist, I prefer to grow-my-own (organically) rather than patronise supermarkets' shelves or wastebins, but I do buy reduced price specials as 'best before' dates are not critical and the immune system gets tougher from challenges. I believe my minimalist obsession arose not only from detailed work studies in several industries (including Crosse & Blackwell in the 1950s) but also a genetic thing - my mum, from Stepney, used to rinse out milk bottles and pass all used saucepans, basins and jars to me after cooking, and until a few years ago, I still licked my plate - although not in restaurants!

    One thing still puzzles me. Of the several 3rd-world partners that I have lived with, none practiced economy in food or any other resurces. This worries me when we consider the constant importation of 3rd-worlders who may have less motivation than us wartime citizens to economise for the future, prefering to spend and consume while they can?

  • Comment number 64.

    indignantindegene (#63) "This worries me when we consider the constant importation of 3rd-worlders who may have less motivation than us wartime citizens to economise for the future, prefering to spend and consume while they can?"

    So it should.

    As I have said at length elsewhere, the logic and empirical evidence predicts that in the long run, the UK must, extrapolating from recent data and what has happened elsewhere (cf. USA), become more like Third World countries, rather than Third World immigrants becoming more like indigenous Britons (unless one focuses on the indigenous underclass where the rate of crime, illness and other problems are higher). This is what I think the average indigenous Briton fears. The problem is that for some, it won't happen for a generation or so, and all they care about now is themselves, now. In the end, one has to ask whether that can ever be a sound way to govern a country. Recent events should have worken people up to the fact that it is not. But sadly, people don't wake-up, because that would suggest that people can indeed learn from education/events above and beyond that which they are genetically programmed to pick up on, and as I keep[ saying, all the evidence is firmly against that, despite what many have been told.

    People are wildly misled by the fact that some people in some groups are indeed very able. What they fail to note what is statistically typical of groups, and they fail because eithe they lack the ability to talk in such terms with confidence or because they have been egregiously taught that it is wrong to stereotype. Yet we do that all the time when we talk of dogs, cats, apples, buses and all other statistical classes of things. We use nouns and adjectives etc, we have no choice, and it would be mad not to do so.

  • Comment number 65.

    Well Indignantindegene, here are some statistics that Migration Watch have found about our extra population that may be throwing away the food.

    15th July '09 How are we going to feed all these millions of new people I just don't know, and our "carbon footprint!" for want of a better description will just keep on growing with them. I don't know why the media in general talk about our population of 61 million, it must be at least 65. We've been increasing at the rate of quarter of a million for years.

    Even my kids lick their plates! ; )

  • Comment number 66.

    And this is how they get the money, to buy the food, they throw away.

    Why isn't this on the news instead of the hype about terrorism and 'flu and Iraq/Afganistan, far more relevant to this country I should think.

  • Comment number 67.

    Post 62 JJ Your Brain Is A Brain High Brow/Low Brow I know Which

  • Comment number 68.

    "-Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. ... Is there no other way the world may live?
    Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, "The Chance for Peace" (1953-04-16)

    Dwight D. Eisenhower

  • Comment number 69.

    #66 ecolizzy

    The thing that BNP supporters may not have been able to grasp about 9/11 was that it had a vast impact on the economy.

    Swine flu may also have a huge impact on the economy depending on how it plays out.

    Of course the far right delights in conspiracy theory, perhaps because it annoys others and perhaps because they have to have that bent of mind to "believe" there was no Holocaust or that 9/11 was the work of the "Jewish Communist International". Perhaps also they may exploit the mentally weak - though I doubt many in that category would read the Newsnight web page.

    Everything is down to the Jews although according to their logic you could have homed in on the fact that in the thirties Stalin ejected people with predominantly brown eyes and therefore all people with brown eyes conspired against the work of Hitler.

    These are the kind of people who can talk about revering Hitler and not laugh.

    Though they are all quite incompetent intellectually you can't laugh at them as people with similar views to them are people like Von Bruun (American Friend of the BNP) who shot a security guard at a Holocaust Memorial and Lewington (far right fanatic) who was preparing bombs to try and cause racial strife.

  • Comment number 70.

    Finally McBride surfaces and does not implicate Gordon Brown in the email smear campaign.

    I assume that if he gives evidence to the HoC on the same lines and then it emerges later (a stray email or suchlike) that Gordon did know there would be the most enormous political damage to labour.

    But probably that would probably at best be after the election.

    I just don't find it credible that a control freak like Brown did not know what was on the McBride agenda and if McBride had been unthinkingly been collecting stories he would probably have passed on the information for Browns political judgement.

  • Comment number 71.

    #40 kingcelticlion

    So the person who said "don't do politics" is now starting to break cover and we see:

    "I'm not saying Hitler wasn't a very naughty boy. But compared to the regime now. That's all he was."

    Fifty million died in WWII and he gassed and shot millions of people due to their racial or political disposition.

    Hitler remains the gold standard of evil as he knew exactly what he was doing.

    But on the environmental front the argument has only been settled relatively recently on the science front. To gear international politics up in a few years is quite difficult and though there has been foot dragging there is no evil intent.

    Given your alleged involvement with Nobel prize winners and your consequently very high scientific rigour I find such statements to be bizarre.

    That is unless it is considered you are just another limited BNP activist?

  • Comment number 72.

    #39 indignantindegene
    "Sounds rather patronising to me, and obviously inadequate for some one million who voted BNP last month. "

    The BNP don't patronise they mislead.

    They used a Spitfire and, I believe Churchill, on their campaign literature and their spokes people claimed they are a "modern and progressive" party. Their broadcast stressed that they organised day trips for children and did not spy on rubbish collections.

    So people looking for a home for a protest vote get sucked in.

    If they read comments about revering Hitler, the Jewish Communist International, eugenics, the end of democracy, race "realism" they will wake up to the fact that the BNP is a party that barely disguises its basic evil.

  • Comment number 73.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 74.

    #72 Gof1
    Perhaps you misread the quote by the Home Secretary:
    "politicians have to speak to people in the language they can understand about the problems they are facing ". To me that is patronising as it suggests that people do not understand what is happening in this country, so politicians have to SPIN it to them.

    Personaly, I like the icons of the Spitfire and Winston Churchill as representing Britain at its finest. Celebrated my 7th birthday on the day we declared war on Hitler; watched he dogfights over London a year later, my only sorrow then was that I was too young to join up, but I did get my wings later in life.

    I know nothing of the day trips for children, or the Jewish communists to which you refer.

    As for 'race realism' my protest is that all the major political parties are too 'politically correct' or have other hidden agendas, so do not challenges the fact that this country has become overcrowded and overrun by alien cultures. Since you obviously despise the practice of protest voting, I assume you vote for more of the same incompetence and total disregard by politicians for what many people feel strongly about?

  • Comment number 75.

    thegangofone (#69) Do you believe that there is anything which is much more genetically prevalent amongst the Jews than in other groups?

  • Comment number 76.

    #75 addendum: links have been provided in the past to a) BRCA1, BRCA2 risk for breast cancer and b) CYP21 polymorphism on C6P21 and NCAH which I have suggested may well account for subtle behavioural consequences.

    I think it may be time to stop abusing those who seek to inform on the basis of fact. It would also be good if the media stopped censoring/censuring the truth as it's bad for science, and much else besides.

  • Comment number 77.

    Go1 #69
    "Perhaps also they may exploit the mentally weak - though I doubt many in that category would read the Newsnight web page."

    It'seems there are a few who do ;-)

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