Alexander Milne

So farewell, then, Ken Livingstone, doughty champion of the Left, beaten in London’s 2012 Mayoral election by a character from P.G. Wodehouse: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

In the end, the margin of victory was slim: 62,538 (2.8%) out of a total of 2,208,433 votes cast.  Moreover, Ken edged ahead of Boris in the second preference votes. See the results here.

But it was “too little, too late”. BoJo’s celebrity status, a general anti-Ken media bias, notably in London’s sole remaining daily blatt (The Evening Standard: 74%-owned by Messrs Alexander and Evgeny Lebedev), and a sad tendency by some “Labour supporters” to vote for Boris rather than Ken, were enough to propel the haystack-haired music-hall act across the winning line.

Now, it has to be admitted that Ken Livingstone was not everyone’s cup of tea, even within the Labour Party.  Not everyone understood his support for “obscure” causes such as the Cuban Revolution and Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian makeover of Venezuela’s corrupt oligarchies.  And he certainly made a few anti-Scottish remarks in his time, while promoting the idea that London “subsidises” the rest of the UK (notwithstanding that the Metropolis is kept going by “immigrant” labour, including Scots).

But still: he was years ahead of his time on environmental policy (the Congestion Charge etc) and on social issues such as racial equality and gay rights.  Meanwhile the Bold Boris was a mere wordsmith, a journalist pandering to the increasingly doddery readership of The Daily Telegraph (where he began his career – note: BEGAN! - as a leader writer) with throwaway lines about “piccaninnies” with “watermelon grins”.

Now Boris – a man from a rather narrow social background, who got round a previous journalistic sacking merely by phoning up his mate who just happened to be editor of another national newspaper – is talked of as Prime Ministerial calibre!   He is even emboldened to joke that his Mayoral bid “survived the endorsement of David Cameron” (the Old Etonian PM whose Coalition took a beating elsewhere in Britain, and which incidentally was pushed into third place in the Scottish local council elections).

Read the rest of this entry »

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

As the London Mayoral election campaign heats up and the “big beasts” (Ken and Boris) bray at each other like dinosaurs over a primeval swamp, I couldn’t help noticing the British National Party candidate’s name: Carlos Cortiglia.

Is it just me or isn’t that name a bit…… foreign-sounding?

A foreigner railing against foreigners.  Sounds like a buena idea for a successor to Alf “Till Death Us Do Part” Garnett.  Any sitcom writers out there…..?

It turns out that Mr Cortiglia is Uruguayan and came to the UK as long ago (sic) as 1989.  Read about him (and the other six Mayoral candidates) here.

To Senor Cortiglia and all other BNP candidates, I can only repeat Groucho Marx’s injunction: “You go Uruguay and I’ll go mine”.

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

From George Galloway, newly-elected Respect MP for Bradford West, addressing the ever-aggressive BBC rottweiler-cum-interviewer Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, 3/4/2012:-

“Please don’t think I’m on trial before you, Jeremy.  You’re not fit to be my judge.”

Since Paxman’s style of interviewing – interruptive, disrespectful, superficial – is so widely copied nowadays (e.g. David Dimbleby, Charlie Stayt and practically every other political journalist, of whom there are dozens on the BBC alone), it’s very refreshing to see someone fight back and remind TV presenters of a universal truth: that TV “talking heads” aren’t as important as their interviewees.

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

Congratulations to Kyle Murphy for the above headline, which must surely qualify as a frontrunner for the Headline of the Year competition (and it’s only 1st April).

Consider the Roman Catholic Church’s role in the Cuban Revolution.  In 1962, the Diocese of Miami helped organise Operacion Pedro Pan (”Operation Peter Pan”).  Cuban children, it said, were in danger of being separated from their parents and appropriated by the state as Fidel’s personal property.  They would be serially abused in massive, soulless institutions, brainwashed, by uniformed tyrants, into supporting an ideology based on fear.

Whereas the Roman Catholic Church…… [ADD YOUR OWN JOKE HERE].

The fact that the Cuban government is still talking to the Pope and his 14 Cuban archbishops, despite the Operation Peter Pan slander (echoes of which persist in the public consciousness to this day), is proof that things DO change, even in Cuba.  And a damned sight faster too.  How long did it take the Vatican to ‘fess up and admit that Galileo (1564-1642) might, in fact, have had a point? (ANSWER: 350 years.  In 1992, Pope Jean Paul II finally expressed “regret” about the church’s handling of Galileo).

The fact that fewer than 10% of Cubans are practicing Catholics suggests that miracles will indeed be required to restore the church’s fortunes in a land whose leaders are guided by logic, reason and materialism as opposed to Pie-in-the-Sky.

Meanwhile, the Pope condemned the US economic blockade of Cuba. It was the least he could do, all things considered…..

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

There must be a US election on the horizon!  Because we’re now seeing the traditional rhetorical bashing of the Cuban Revolution by US Republican Presidential hopefuls trying to woo the key Cuban-American lobby.

Hence Senators Mitt Romney got into a “debate” about whether Fidel Castro will go to Heaven or Hell when he finally shuffles off this mortal coil (an event that Cuban-American wingnuts have already announced many times in the past).   Gingrich went one further and said that he’d deploy US Special Forces to destabilise the Cuban regime.  Read about it here.

Not a word from these lovers of democracy and government-by-majority about the  annual UN vote against the US economic embargo, by 185 countries against 3 – the USA and a couple of its client states.

And let’s not even ask how the GOP candidates know for sure that there IS a Heaven and Hell to go to…….  Isn’t it more a case, as the Irish comedian Dave Allen said of a funeral service he misheard as a child, of “In the name of the Father, the Son, and into the Hole he goes…..“

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

Thinking about George Orwell, who died on the tarmac at Croydon Airport, en route to a last-gasp health cure in Switzerland, 62 years ago today.  He set the gold standard for political essayists and polemicists everywhere, whilst incidentally producing “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm”, two of the most influential books in the English language.

His real surname was Blair; what a shame that that surname is now tainted forever by the grinning Cheshire Cat neocon God-botherer / Middle East peace envoy who made his own, not inconsiderable contribution to an Orwellian society where intrusive CCTV is as ubiquitous as prolefeed (”The X Factor”) and Newspeak (language stripped of content or meaning, e.g. any mainstream political rally stage-managed by spin doctors).

I sometimes wonder what George Orwell the Spanish War veteran would have said about Tony, the warmonger and millionaires’ best friend…..

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

I didn’t see the whole of last night’s Question Time programme on BBC1 but, based on what I glimpsed, I wonder why the likes of the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon still bother turning up.  They cannot get a word in edgeways because the presenter, David Dimbleby, keeps interrupting their answers.  He treats all politicians as if they were liars and / or idiots.

On the subject of the Scottish independence referendum, Dimbleby – the superannuated relic of a BBC dynasty – sounds like a talking version of the Daily Mail, trundling out cliches which the hugely one-sided panel (also comprising rentagob ex-editor of The Sun Kelvin Mackenzie) failed to challenge.  In other words, Ms Sturgeon effectively on her own, was treated with patronising disdain.

Weren’t there any academics who could have been trundled out to produce a more neutral viewpoint?  Or have we reached the stage when the arrogance of Kelvin Mackenzie is the last word in informed comment?

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

The new Maggie Thatcher biopic “The Iron Lady” starring Meryl Streep is getting a lot of press coverage but one wonders how it will fare at the UK box office, given the prevailing public cynicism about politics, the media and practically everything else.

My guess is that many recession-weary Brits – including Yours Truly – would prefer to see “Alvin and Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” or the new (silent) movie “The Artist”.

(By the way, forgive me for not inserting an explanatory hyperlink to “The Iron Lady” website but, quite frankly, the movie is getting more than enough free publicity already …… including this!).

Read the rest of this entry »

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

As echoes of Auld Lang Syne die away, and pyrotechnicians across the globe (London, Sydney, New York, Stonehaven) start planning this year’s Hogmanay extravaganzas, it’s an appropriate moment to wish the readers of this blog a belated “Happy New Year” and to ruminate, briefly, on the events of 2011.

In many ways, I am still coming to grips with last year’s to-ings and fro-ings.  Here are some random thoughts on just a few of the stories that caught my eye (and every other bloggers’)…..

Read the rest of this entry »

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post

Someone recently drew an excellent comparison between professional footballers who fall to the ground writhing in pain and agony after the lightest of touches by an opponent, and professional bodies in the UK finance industry, such as the British Bankers’ Association, who over-react dramatically – almost operatically – whenever a politician or member of the public suggests that maybe, just maybe, the banks should be regulated a bit more closely, given the “mere detail” that the Western banking sector almost brought down the entire global economy during the GFC (”Global Financial Crisis”), of which Part Two is just weeks away.

Read the rest of this entry »

Delicious Digg This Post Facebook Stumble This Post