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A “frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussauds”

Et tu, FT?

I said the mandarins would turn against him and they have, with gusto – this from today’s issue:

Mr Blair should recognise his errors and go
By Rodric Braithwaite
Published: August 2 2006 19:27

A spectre is stalking British television, a frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussaud?s. This one, unusually, seems to live and breathe. Perhaps it comes from the Central Intelligence Agency?s box of technical tricks, programmed to spout the language of the White House in an artificial English accent.

[…]

But whatever our sympathy for Israel?s dilemma, Mr Blair?s prime responsibility is to defend the interests of his own country. This he has signally failed to do. Stiff in opinions, but often in the wrong, he has manipulated public opinion, sent our soldiers into distant lands for ill-conceived purposes, misused the intelligence agencies to serve his ends and reduced the Foreign Office to a demoralised cipher because it keeps reminding him of inconvenient facts. He keeps the dog, but he barely notices if it barks or not. He prefers to construct his ?foreign policy? out of self-righteous soundbites and expensive foreign travel.

Mr Blair has done more damage to British interests in the Middle East than Anthony Eden, who led the UK to disaster in Suez 50 years ago. In the past 100 years ? to take the highlights ? we have bombed and occupied Egypt and Iraq, put down an Arab uprising in Palestine and overthrown governments in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf. We can no longer do these things on our own, so we do them with the Americans. Mr Blair?s total identification with the White House has destroyed his influence in Washington, Europe and the Middle East itself: who bothers with the monkey if he can go straight to the organ-grinder?

Mr Blair has seriously damaged UK domestic politics, too. His prevarication over a ceasefire confirms to many of our Muslim fellow citizens that Britain is engaged in a secular war against the Arab world and by extension, against the Muslim world. He has thus made it harder to achieve what should be a goal of policy for any British government ? to build a tolerant multi-ethnic society within our own islands. And though he chooses not to admit it, he has made us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks. These are not achievements of which a British prime minister should be proud.

[..]

Sir Rodric Braithwaite, UK ambassador to Moscow 1988-92 and then foreign policy adviser to John Major and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, is author of Moscow 1941 (Profile, 2006)

Read whole thing

Blair Lebanon

Mutton Dressed As Lamb

I’m so sick of the pressure put on me and women my age to look 20-plus years younger. It’s not enough to be chic and soignee these days, you have to be plucked, waxed, tinted, botoxed and exercised to within an inch of your life. And it’s so expensive – the last two haircuts ( just a cut and blowdry, nothing else) cost 35 pounds and 60 euro respectively. That’s a lot of money every 6 weeks, and doesn’t include all the hair products and maintenance in between. And makeup – 30 quid for a bottle of foundation that’ll last a month? I don’t think so.

I’m all for elegance and grooming (I’d love to go back to the ’30s style-wise if I could) and I love a bit of mindless self-indulgence, but bloody hell, the spectacle of grown women suckered by-marketing hype into looking like precariously trussed chickens pretending to be teeny-girl paedo-fodder is ridiculous.

I’m not the only one who feels this way:

[…]

Glimpse yourself in the mirror or in a shop window and you might think you are your mother. You’ve got her walk, her chin, and you’re probably saving bits of leftover food in cling film on saucers in the fridge and asking for tap water at restaurants – like she does. The difference is that you’re multi-tasking in double figures, with your career as well as a family to run, while these days your mum’s out at line dancing with her mates, at creative writing, or watching Watercolour Challenge with a nice big cream cake and a glass of wine.

Letting yourself go in my mother’s day was going out without a pair of tights.

What’s different is that your mother was allowed to grow old. She had her hair set, she wore twin sets, tweed, comfy shoes and waved her fingers at people or scowled at youths who dropped litter. She ran the cakestall at the WI and people treated her with respect (people were actually a bit scared of her). She was not expected to compete with young women in the looks stakes. She was above it. It didn’t matter that she bought cashmere jumpers to last, got wrinkles, or wore half moon glasses on a useful chain round her neck, it was expected of her. It wasn’t that she ‘let herself go’ as the dreadful phrase goes, letting yourself go to my mother was not making the beds till 11am, eating in the street, or going out without a pair of tights. She wasn’t expected to compete with me, borrow my hipster jeans, fancy pants or Bay City Roller scarf. She was allowed to look like Fanny Craddock, or Margot Leadbetter ? and people gave her service at the Co-op and took her seriously.

[…]

It’s pretty ironic that this rant, from the writer of BBC’s Grumpy Old Women, is featured on AllAboutYou.com, a website dedicated to makeup, hair and appearance and apparently funded by cosmetics company advertising.

I refuse to be suckered into spending money I can’t afford to look a way I don’t want to look. That way lies madness.

I rest my case.

“Definitions Will Treat Us As Liberators!”

Stephen Colbert explains the wikiality-based community for the slow learners.

UK Media News

At least there’s some glimmers of pleasure amongst the darkness, though it probably only matters to me and all the other middle-aged Radio 4 addicts:

It’s been a long haul but Radio 4 has finally found a successor to John Peel to run the cosy Saturday morning get-together with the listening nation, Home Truths. The choice is Fi Glover, who made her name on Radio Five Live but has won her spurs in other fields. Taking an interest in public service work, she was frustrated by the quango system and ended up giving evidence to an MPs’ inquiry into ways of opening it up. Tony Wright, chair of the public administration select committee, was impressed by her evidence. The programme restarts when Glover gets back from maternity leave next month, albeit under a new name. Home Truths is too bound up with Peel to stay as the title, says Radio 4 controller Mark Damazer.

I disagree – I think they should keep the ‘Home Truths’ name, Glover can carry it. Sunday mornings’ Broadcasting House has not been the same without her ; she was the only presenter with the requisite snarkability and quiet wit to possibly replace Eddie Mair. The presenter BH has on now (I can’t even remember his name; shows what an impression he makes) tries, but he’s awkward, stilted, and frankly embarassing at times and his guests are dullsville, man.

The good thing about Glover ( and Meyer, who now presents PM) is that you can hear their sardonically raised eyebrows when they read the latest bit of Bush/Blair egregiousness. It’s a very English, middle-class and middlebrow form of subversion and very entertaining – not that it’ll ever upset the status quo, but then that’s not what the Beeb is for, is it?

Care In The Community…

…Theme Hospital style