..of shit Murdoch journos; however did Daniel Finkelstein, the Times’ supposedly premier political commentator, get away with a blogpost like this?
Lavishly illustrated, of course, with photos of said bunnies in costumes ranging from bits of strategically placed pink fur to a corset and vertiginous heels.
Why? I can only suppose it’s because Finkelstein thinks politics is serious, man’s business. Ladies, know your place!
You know the world’s gone a bit kerflooey when The Times devotes a couple of pages – complete with a big quote from Eric Hobsbawm – to an analysis of whether or not Karl Marx was right.
Of course it being a Murdoch paper the other quotes are from careerists from Living Marxism and Spiked, and the former comic, now smug bourgeois author Alexei Sayle.
That said, Sayle puts his finger on one consequence of this rediscovery of Marx – the secret glee many leftists surely indulge in when we think no-one is looking:
From out of the dusty corners and fetid holes where they have been hiding for so many long decades of pain, his true disciples are emerging blinking into the light. At last they are being asked to write small pieces in newspapers and appear on late-night political TV shows hosted by men with strange hair, and with one voice these true disciples of Karl Marx are saying: “I told you so! I bloody told you so! I’ve been going on about this stuff for years but you didn’t listen, did you? Instead you just stopped inviting me to your dinner parties and didn’t answer my increasingly desperate text messages. Now you’re sorry, aren’t you? But it’s too late. Ha ha ha ha ha.”
Yes. Well. I’d never do such a thing. Mwahahah… oops.
Take a hundred lines. “I will not indulge in schadenfreude… I will not indulge in schadenfreude…”
Strange days indeed, when it takes a porn baron to keep an eye on Britons’ online liberty. Could Richard Desmond become the UK’s Larry Flynt, I wonder? He’s had a hand in politics before…
Back along I posted about the Interception Modernisation Programme and the paucity of the available information about it:
Speaking of IT clusterfscks…
Somebody tipped me off to the innocent sounding “Interception Modernisation Programme”, but what is this exactly? It’s mentioned in this “Security and Counter-Terrorism Science and Innovation Strategy” document (PDF) from the Home Office, which seems to be some sort of happy face p.r.-minded strategy overview to show how on the ball the government is in combatting terrorism through innovation and science . In this context, the “Interception Modernisation Programme” is only mentioned in an aside and it sounds like it could be anything:
Intercepting terrorist communications
Knowing the content of terrorist communications is vital to the UK’s ability to respond to terrorism. The cutting-edge interception technology required is therefore critical to building up our intelligence and to understanding the nature of the threat.
The Interception Modernisation Programme is a cross-Government programme which aims to maintain the UK’s world-class capability in obtaining and exploiting terrorist communications data. It is a key example of how Government is using innovative and ground-breaking technology to stay well ahead of the terrorists
Well, now I know, courtesy of the Daily Express, proprietor New Labour’s favourite pornographer, Mr Richard Desmond:
After the top-secret plans were leaked yesterday critics accused the Government of stalking the public. Michael Parker of anti-identity card group No2ID said: “It is a shocking intrusion into privacy. This is stalking. If an individual carried out this sort of snooping, it would be a crime.”
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said the proposal marked “a substantial shift in the powers of the state to obtain information on individuals”. And after a series of embarrassing security blunders including the loss of child benefit records for every family in the country, he questioned Whitehall’s competence to keep such data. He said: “Given the Government’s poor record on protecting data and seeing how significant an increase in power this would be, we need to have a national debate and the Government would have to justify its need.”
ALL telephone calls, emails and text messages in Britain will be monitored under new Government snooping plans. A £12billion identity database at the GCHQ spy centre could even log every website visited by computer users nationwide.
Hundreds of bugging probes will be installed in the telephone system and computer networks to monitor communications traffic.
GCHQ has already been handed £1billion of taxpayers’ cash to begin developing the database.
After the top-secret plans were leaked yesterday critics accused the Government of stalking the public. Michael Parker of anti-identity card group No2ID said: “It is a shocking intrusion into privacy. This is stalking. If an individual carried out this sort of snooping, it would be a crime.”
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said the proposal marked “a substantial shift in the powers of the state to obtain information on individuals”. And after a series of embarrassing security blunders including the loss of child benefit records for every family in the country, he questioned Whitehall’s competence to keep such data. He said: “Given the Government’s poor record on protecting data and seeing how significant an increase in power this would be, we need to have a national debate and the Government would have to justify its need.”
The plan for the biggest surveillance system in British history is being spearheaded by GCHQ director Sir David Pepper.
It is currently classified as top secret and is being developed under the title: Interception Modernisation Programme.
The aim is to set up a “live tap” on every electronic communication in the country. At present, security service MI5 carries out limited monitoring of email exchanges and internet use.
Ministers have been told that the latest computer technology lays the grounds of a massive expansion of monitoring.
The database is likely to be centred at GCHQ’s famous “doughnut”-shaped spy centre in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Further details will be released when the Government’s legislative programme is announced in the Queen’s Speech in December.
The plan is even more ambitious than the Identity Cards scheme being gradually introduced by the Government at a cost of £5billion. While a final decision has yet to be taken, ministers are understood to have agreed to the move “in principle”.
No wonder the Express is worried, considering how much money Desmond’s business empire makes from soft porn and technology – and considering some of the very dodgy people he’s done business with too.
Sometimes private (very private) interests and public interest collide – so shouldn’t Desmond put some of his porn-derived cash behind the privacy campaigns, if he’s so concerned?
Aww, I do like a warm and fuzzy family reunion.
It’s great to see the blind become able to see. And it’s even nicer when it’s the crazy distant relative some of us wish we’d just kept locked in the basement all of this time.
The relative is reactionary US political pundit George Will, who’s being welcomed in from the howling outer darkness of the back yard into the slightly uncertain semi-tolerance of the scullery. Crazy George was initially banished for doing this kind of thing:
He gently acknowledged great disappointment in Ronald Reagan after learning that Reagan used debate notes stolen from Jimmy Carter as he prepped, with George Will’s help, for debating Carter. That actually soured his private agreement with Republicans quite a bit, even if it’s not common knowledge to the audience he reaches.
That sourness didn’t stop him colluding with the theft though did it? But no matter what the hypocrisy, there’s always redemption:
He has however, now come to his senses, and come to share the view of me, his equally-distant relative. That view being, of course, that Sarah Palin should, under no circumstances, be a nominee for Vice President of the United States.
Huzzah and harrumble, for such a touching reunion!
Comes from the Daily Wail:
Ant and Dec come under Taliban rocket attack
