A practically perfect weekend

This and that

I've been a lazy blogger. After the flurry of posting roughly 10 days ago I haven't wriiten a thing. I drafted a few isdeas out, I just never actually turned them into actual postings.

Here now to right a wrong, I thought i'd just flag up a couple of newspaper articles I enjoyed, which now have the added quality/disbenefit of being at least a week out of date.

First off, here's David Mitchell of Peep Show (and nearly all comedic panel gameshows) fame. I'm finding myself rather drawn to his regular articles for the Guardian. He's a pretty good writer, though I think half the effect is that I read it, in my head, in his voice. He has something of the 'gah, really, it's so simple, why are people such idiots?' of Charlie Brooker (this is a good thing).

Anyway, in this article David comtemplates the Tories' indignation that Alan Sugar is combining his work for the politically neutral BBC with his new role as the Government's Enterprise 'Tzar'. Predictably, everyone involved looks like a bit of a fool.

Following that, here's a twee but rather nice article about a overly precocious child helping to edit a newspaper

Ignore Nick Griffin

Well, ignoring Nick Griffin is salient advise I offer to all voters, however in regards to this post my meaning is a little different*.

Look at the above picture and look at the great style displayed by the intrepid journalist doggedly keeping his dictaphone in front of the hate-monger's mouth even while being splattered with deflected egg.

The grey suit, the jacket sleeve pushed up, the contrasting tie and the great glasses. If i'm not mistaken he's also sporting a pocket square. Top marks!

*This post is trivial, I don't deny.

When your cleaner turns up in the same dress as you, do you ask her to go home and change?

Oh god, The Daily Mail still hasn't got the 'It's not the 1930s' memo. Throughout the years there have been countless articles written around the supposed embarrassment of being caught wearing the same outfit as someone else.

The Mail finds a whole new angle on this: The shame of wearing the same thing as your hired help! How dare these lesser beings have the termerity to suggest that they can afford the same things as you or indeed share your supposedly elevated middle-class tastes? Back to the workhouses with them, they should be in rags!

The writer goes as far as to ponder whether this is a disciplinary offense: Cleaner looks pretty today? she's wearing make-up? Dock the chit a days pay!

The March of the Far-Right?

The aftermath of last week's European Election campaign in the UK is dominated by one story - the two seats won by the BNP in the North West and Yorkshire and Humber regions.

What has followed the announcement of the results on Sunday is a huge outpouring of media comment, mostly reactive panic. The headline message being given out is that the BNP are growing in organisation, sophistication and support.

However, is this maelstrom potentially doing more harm than good? The BNP have never had so much publicity, and for a small party with a virtually non-existant marketing budget the idea that any news is good news must surely hold some credence. To my mind the danger is that by inviting BNP representatives on to TV news or the Today programme is that gives them not only a chance to raise their profile, not only that it gives them 5 minutes to atempt to explain and justify their hatred to potential converts but that it gives them the airs of a normal acceptable political party.

I'm sure that the news editors are well meaning in their attempts to shine a light on the BNP's true nature but unfortunately there also seems to be an aspect of masochism involved too. After all, how fun is it for news interviewers at al superior and as moral authority, to bring the BNP on like pigs to the slaughter, to run rings around them and mock them as ignorant fools. I'll answer that, it's pretty fun. The only trouble is that the interviewers are so keen to destroy the BNP's credibility that they pounce on Andrew Brons or Nick Griffin with question 2 before they're barely 4 words into answering question 1. It sometimes feels like children taunting the slow-witted in the playground and it frustrates me, because I'm convinced that if only the interviewer was to let the BNP member continue to talk they'd soon end up tying themselves in knots and jumping straight through the huge holes in their arguments.

The key concern of the political mainstream is whether this result means that the BNP are any more of a political force now than they have been in the past. A quick look at the statistics and we see a slightly more positive story to the one which has dominated the news and one which has been obscured by some of the more dramatic press coverage. Yes, the BNP won two new seats but the data suggests that rather than being the result of a huge increase in support for the party their achievements have very little connection to their own efforts. Their overall vote total increased by 1.4% (up from 4.9% in the 2005 elections) but their share of the vote in the two regions in which they won parliamentary seats actually fell. With Labour polling 6.8% of the total vote lower than in 2005 and with voter turnout at a terribly low 34% (reports suggest that many of Labour's heartland simply failed to vote) it appears that these two aspects were far greater causes of the far-rights gain of the two seats. Their percentage take of the total vote and therfore the number of seats won increased not because they attracted a large number of new followers but because their number of supporters who turned out to vote remained much the same but those of other parties was lower then last time. Things in the UK then, for now are not as depressing as they are in the Netherlands where Geert Wilders' (banned from entering the UK) Freedom Party achieved second place in the European elections with 17% of the total Dutch vote.

Certainly we must remain vigilant and not dismiss the threat posed by the BNP but we must also avoid hyperbole and sensationalism. One hopes that the BNP remains a small and essentially impotent political organisation. We need to avoid complacency and for there to be careful, considered measures taken to address the concerns of those who voted for them. However, trying to avoid overplaying their significance, giving them a greater position in the news-cycle then their size merits and not treating them as a party comparable to those of the mainstream would be a good starting point.

Genius, unintended brilliance, and nail-clipping

The football season is over and so it's time for all those round-ups of highlights, funniest quotes etc etc. The Guardian's Rafa Honigstein and Sid Lowe (both regular guests on the wonderful Football Weekly podcast) have compiled theirs for Germany and Spain respectively. You can read both their articles in full but here I thought I'd just pull out a couple of the best videos.

First up there's a sublime goal from Germany. Watch as Wolfburg's Grafite skips past half the Bayern Munich team before casually putting the ball into the net almost mockingly. It was the final straw for Bayern's directors, Jurgen Klinsmann recieved his P45 after the game:


Also from Germany, but at the other end of the spectrum, here's a 'there's-no-way on-earth-he-meant-to-do-that' goal from Sebastian Langkamp against Leverkusen:


From Spain there is Yaya Toure's fantastic goal for Barcelona to equalise in the cup final:


and, because we've had a taste of the sublime we need also a little bit of the ridiculous.
Here's what Real Madrid manager Juande Ramos got up to on the bench after giving up on the season:

Come back soon!

I love the Fiery Furnaces, very very much, and having been spoilt by their previously incredible output rate - 5 albums in their first 4 years, these days I struggle to cope now that their release schedule has fallen in line with most other bands - i.e. one album every two years.

Anyway it appears (they're not very good at announcing these things, even on their own website) that the next album 'I'm Going Away' will be in the shops in July, so in excitment and anticipation here are a couple of their previous singles.

'Duplexes of the Dead' from their last album 'Widow City'


'Tropical Ice-Land' from their debut record 'Gallowbird's Bark'

Exercising the democratic right

This evening I went to vote, an activity that for unknown, but actually rather liked reasons always stirs a strange swell of satisfaction, pride and sense of importance in my heart.

Today in Britain is the 'European' election. I put European in inverted commas because in all intents and purposes it is in actuality a vote entirely about British domestic politics. Argubly most voters heading to the polls will not recognise a single candidate's name on the ballot paper and will cast their vote based on their verdict of the job done by a completely separate set of polititions from a completely separate institution - the House of Commons.

I can't help but to feel bitterly sad that in the month leading up to these elections there has been all but no debates or articles in the media about what the European Parliament's members have done and what it hopes to do, let alone a proper debate between two or more parties on actual issues such as EU expansion, economic co-operation, tax or foreign affairs. Heck, I'm even nostalgic for the Tory's overly-zealous and jingoistic 'Save the Pound' campaign. Yes, it was based on knee-jeck insecurity and no, it wasn't based on a cold, hard, intelligent assessment of whether adopting the single currency would make Britain a stronger, more prosperous place to live (surely what one should be looking for when choosing a currency right? It's just a tool for buying stuff!) but at least they bloody talked about European politics.

For too long British polititians and the media have failed, perhaps even conspired to maintain the shroud of general ignorance that surrounds the populations understanding of European politics which has the benefit of allowing the British political establishment to keep the EU as a convenient whipping-boy on which to blame their problems and mistakes and the media the ability to write scare-stories about straight bananas. Hindsight leads one to wonder that had the parties in the House of Commons had known exactly what the Daily Telegraph's expenses scandal had in store for them this past month, whether they might have been a little keener to have a debate on the Euro and the Lisbon Treaty.