From Charlie Brooker’s column in the Guardian:
I showed my dad who’s 85, the stuff about expenses. He said he wouldn’t piss on Brown if he was on fire, and that would be hard because he’s incontinent.
Heh.
Comment of the Day
Quite
Steve Bell interviewed by Jamie of Blood & Treasure:
“New media is going to make a big difference. I’ve seen people do amazing things with stuff like flash animation. So creatively these are interesting times. But the main problem with new media is how people are going to get paid. There’s a so-called progressive blog in the States called the Huffington Post which is proud of not paying its contributors. That’s progressive?
Comment of The Day
I see that anarchist rag The Sunday Times (prop. R. Murdoch) is featuring more video of police brutality at the G20.
Rupert Murdoch’s the champion of the oppressed masses now? Who knew? Fight the power, Rupe!
As if.
Commenter GnosticMind responded to Henry Porters’ column on public order policing in today’s Observer and he hits the bullseye when he says:
19 Apr 09, 5:36am (about 2 hours ago)
What is also interesting here is the media treatment of those attacked by the police : The second victim to come forward, the woman from Brighton, has now hired Max bloody Clifford of all people, to represent her : Anyone well versed in Situationist dialectic and critique will see exactly what is happening here — the state media machinery absorbs the threat to the status quo, by repackaging the threat — and selling it back to its own people — as spectacle and entertainment.
The society as spectacle wins yet again — if , that is, most people are fooled and pacified by it yet again.
All that Situationist theory is old hat by now, and very overdone, years ago — but by God they got it right.
They certainly did.
I bet TimesOnline’s hitcount is well up. The management (R. Murdoch) and the advertisers must be loving it. Do I smell an advertising revenue spike?
Dissent and violent repression;not only poliitical theatre but the saviour of the economy.
.
The Love Song Of J Arthur Ranker
The news that Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s husband (and 40 grand a year assistant) has been wanking on the British taxpayers, having charged his rental of satellite porn movies to the public purse, has moved someone in Guido Fawkes’ generally sleazy and unpoetic comments to compose an ode:
Anonymous says:
March 29, 2009 at 9:53 amI spend my lonely weeks in London
Working for Gordon Brown
And crash out on my sister’s floor
Just as the sun goes down
On Friday nights I head back home,
My second home that is,
To spend some time with my true love
And get some married blissDick’s waiting for me in Redditch,
Get me there driver soon
I want to lie in his strong arms
And go into a swoon
I want to collect his DNA
For my own database
I want to open my bursting blouse
And thrust them in his faceOn Friday night when I got home
My second home that is,
Dick said he was all shagged out
And just gave me a kiss
On that fateful Sunday morning,
I read it in the press
Dick’s been watching some dirty films
And got us in a messIt seems he’s been paying five quid
For “Dirty Debutantesâ€
Despite what’s bursting from my blouse
It’s not me that he wants
No Tarantino, no Scorsese,
No Bergmann, no Kubrick
You can’t beat old J Arthur
Says naughty, naughty DickNow I’m the two homes secretary
And hold the highest rank
But Dick he isn’t that impressed
He’d rather have a wank
Another Monday morning dawns
I’m heading back to town
The saddest thing is that I’ll be
Working for Gordon BrownOh Dick! Oh Dick! You stupid prick
I don’t mind pay to view
But you claimed it on expenses
And gave the press their cue
Next Friday when I come back home
My second home that is
I’ll be expecting rather more
Than just a friendly kiss
Not a bad effort for a quick one off the wrist.
Comment Of The Day
Didn’t I say a couple of years back that a depression’s only official when the middle classes start complaining about benefit rates? Job Seekers Allowance is currently just over a measly sixty quid a week and even Guardian journos are struggling.
A commenter wryly commiserated:
23 Mar 09, 11:45am (about 19 hours ago)
I am unemployed. It is impossible to live on £60 a week. Luckily I discovered that I was able to claim £14,000 a year for the house my parents live in. I use it for job seeking and have made over £60,000 .
Neighbours call me a benefits cheat and point out that a couple were recently given a 6 month jail sentence for a £40,000 fraud. I call them a bunch of jealous peasants.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/23/tony-mcnulty-allowances.
Heh.
The brass-necked, greedy dishonesty and sheer hard-faced gall of Employment Minister Tony McNulty, who’s been highly visible in the Guardian’s pages and elsewhere demonising non-existent cheats and scroungers with his hateful ‘no ifs or buts’ anti benefit fraud campaign, beggars belief. Talk about rubbing the faces of the 2 million unemployed in it.
Understandably it’s been front-page news all over the UK and a hot topic on blogs of all political flavours; corruption’s corruption after all, however inured we’ve become to it since the advent of New Labour.
But not at the Guardian, though being a supposedly leftwing paper you’d think they’d find the irony delicious. But while the tabloids and broadsheets scream condemnation the Guardian’s appeared oddly muted on McNulty and strangely quiet on the corruption and greed of the Labour establishment in general. I’m amazed that comment got through CiF’s notoriously harsh moderation.
Another irony the Guardian seems to have missed in light of the up to 150 journalists and others the Guardian Media Group (Editor Alan Rusbridger, salary £355,000 pa including 17,000 benefits) is itself about to make redundant on sixty pounds a week (£3,120 pa)is that it should then publish a comment decrying the low benefit rates that it is itself condemning its own employees to. Talk about rubbing the faces of the unemployed in it.
Comment is Free‘s a very popular Guardian section that appears to rely mostly on insecure freelancers, cheap recent graduates and user generated comments for content and must already be – compared to a fully staffed print newspaper – cheap to run.
It would be interesting to know, therefore, exactly how many Guardian journalists and CiF columnists already rely on the benefits system to feed their families and underpin their struggling and insecure writing careers – and conversely (how like so many other British companies) how many and which newspapers offering low-paid parttime or freelance employment rely on state benefits to underpin their business models. Without Tax Credit support for freelancers how many newspapers would fail entirely, I wonder?
I see now why the Guardian, wants unemployment benefit rates to rise. It’s potentially vital to it’s new shiny 24/7 online business model.
Tell me again, who’re the welfare scroungers exactly? No wonder the Guardian has such a discreet empathy with McNulty.