yonmei

07:33 pm: Eight years ago today...
I left work at about four o'clock, realising at last that I would get nothing more done.

That was a Tuesday. I took the next eight working days off, dazed, shocked, confused, tired, unable to sleep, thinking, about almost everything "What does it matter now?"

Not because of the attack itself: because I was afraid, mortally, horribly afraid of what Americans would do in response to the attack. When the missiles began to fall on Afghanistan, not even a month later, in an odd and horrible kind of way it was almost a relief: you know how you feel when you realise that, do what you might, you have missed the train, or you have broken the crystal bowl: you must deal now with the world as it is. I knew the US response to this attack could destroy the world. It still might. Uncounted thousands have been killed in Afghanistan because of the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon - people who barely had a notion there was a country called America, who had no idea what the WTC looked like. Over a million people have been killed in Iraq. Hundreds of people have been kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured. The US government openly endorses kidnapping, extra-judicial imprisonment, torture, and murder: has openly claimed the right to aggressive war. A distinction without a difference, I might have said, ten years ago, since nothing the US has done in the past eight years was new: but it makes and made a difference that, once, the US tried to present itself as a country with standards. Once upon a time: before Mahar Arar was kidnapped and sent to Syria to be tortured, an act the US then and still defends as legal because a citizen of another country who is in a US airport but has not yet legally entered the country, has no rights in the US. Before the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay was built. Before the first prisoners were brought to Bagram Airbase to be tortured. Before the massacre in Dasht-i-Leili. Before the US, in a wave of bloodthirsty anger that seemed all but universal, began to make war on Afghanistan in revenge for an attack that no Afghan took part in and no Afghan could have stopped.

tzikeh just tweeted links to two things she reads every 9/11: I hadn't read For Thou Art With Us before - a first-hand account of downtown New York on the morning of September 11. (Related: Operation Find Don.) I had read the metafilter as-it-happens thread, or part of it, though not all of it.

I can't say there's any one thing I read every September 11. But there is one thing I do read often, from The Onion, September 26, 2001:

Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. And to be honest, I'm really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand."

.....

"I don't care what faith you are, everybody's been making this same mistake since the dawn of time," God said. "The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don't even get me started on the hardline, right-wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man. And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, 'Turn the other cheek,' but you've been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades."

Growing increasingly wrathful, God continued: "Can't you people see? What are you, morons? There are a ton of different religious traditions out there, and different cultures worship Me in different ways. But the basic message is always the same: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism... every religious belief system under the sun, they all say you're supposed to love your neighbors, folks! It's not that hard a concept to grasp."

"Why would you think I'd want anything else? Humans don't need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other—you've been doing that without any help from Me since you were freaking apes!" God said. "The whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior. How obvious can you get?"

"I'm talking to all of you, here!" continued God, His voice rising to a shout. "Do you hear Me? I don't want you to kill anybody. I'm against it, across the board. How many times do I have to say it? Don't kill each other anymore—ever! I'm fucking serious!"

Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then, witnesses reported, God's shoulders began to shake, and He wept.

Whereas in July four years ago, though all day I was checking to make sure everyone I knew and cared about in London was alive and well, I wasn't panicking. Not just because you can't step in the same river once, but because... well, this was Britain: this was my country. Make tea not war. I posted this on Metaquote from jslayeruk's journal (and of course a year later it was vanished because I was banned, but by that time it had gone global)

“When the news reporter said "Shopkeepers are opening their doors bringing out blankets and cups of tea" I just smiled. It's like yes. That's Britain for you. Tea solves everything. You're a bit cold? Tea. Your boyfriend has just left you? Tea. You've just been told you've got cancer? Tea. Coordinated terrorist attack on the transport network bringing the city to a grinding halt? Tea dammit! And if it's really serious, they may bring out the coffee. The Americans have their alert raised to red, we break out the coffee. That's for situations more serious than this of course. Like another England penalty shoot-out.”

Not that we're nicer people than the Americans. But we're not an Empire. Not any more.



Tags: evil american politics, evil british politics, guantanamo bay, iraq, lj abuse did what???, september 11

12:45 am: Prime Minister to Alan Turing
(See Orson Scott Card, meet Alan Turing for some backstory.)

10 Downing Street, Thursday 10 September 2009:

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate - by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices - that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

The petition is still open (30,816 signatures so far) and John Graham-Cumming was hoping Turing could get a posthumous knighthood...



Tags: *bounce*, evil british politics, imagine better

10:34 am: This is why I wouldn't travel to Canada via the US
Shahrukh Khan detained at Newark for travelling while brown:

India has asked the US to explain why a leading Bollywood film star was allegedly detained for two hours at Newark airport, which serves New York.

Shah Rukh Khan, who was released after India's embassy in the US intervened, said he felt angry and humiliated.

The actor, who is promoting a film on racial profiling, said he was stopped because he had a Muslim name.

But US customs officials denied that Mr Khan had been detained, saying he was questioned for 66 minutes.

Elmer Camacho, a spokesman for the US Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, said the questioning was part of the agency's routine process to screen foreign travellers, the Associated Press news agency reports. BBC

It's not that Shahrukh Khan was detained for a couple of hours because some shmuck in Immigrations thought he might be a terrorist because his surname was wrong and he was travelling while brown: racists show up everywhere but are particularly obvious at airports. (There was an incident at Heathrow ten years ago where the British Ambassador to Jamaica was told that as he was travelling on a one-way ticket he would have to show evidence from his employer that he was going to a job in Jamaica before he could be allowed out of the UK: the British Airways employee tasked with making trouble for people travelling while black evidently couldn't believe a black man really was in possession of a diplomatic passport.)

It's that the US government defends this as a "routine process". That's why I won't go to the US: where racist treatment at immigration is defended as "routine", even when it means former Presidents trying to travel via US airlines get "routinely" searched.

Shahrukh Khan was able to contact the Indian Embassy and ask them to intervene. But an ordinary guy traveling while brown surnamed Khan would just have had to put up with it, for as long as the "routine" process of harassment and discrimination happened to last.

(At Heathrow, my bag was searched right after a guy going to India's bag was searched: mine because, once through the security check at Glasgow, I'd bought a bottle of water at Boots - which was taken away from me because I might make a bomb with it - his because he'd packed a tin of Coffeemate. He was more worried than I was, and with good reason - he repeated several times "I haven't done anything wrong" to which the white woman searching his carry-on bag would say "no, I just have to do this" - while I looked away at the wall after realising that he'd packed a basic short-stay carry-on bag and I was sure he didn't want a total stranger watching as his underwear got unfolded...)

As has been noted in the Globe and Mail, Canada also has racist harassment at airports of people travelling while brown - and serious issues with how the Canadian government treats Muslim citizens arriving or departing: Abousfian Abdelrazik is still trying to reclaim full Canadian citizenship after being arrested and exported for torture.

I do believe, though, that the US government is the only power simply saying "Yes, we do these things, and it's legal for us to do so." Barack Obama's administration has made no change to George W. Bush's claims that the US has the legal right to kidnap, send to indefinite extrajudicial detention, and torture prisoners: in fact, Obama has plans to expand the prison camp for US kidnap victims at Bagram Airbase, which has sections where even the Red Cross are not allowed admittance, and from which no legal appeal is permitted, not even habeus corpus: the writ which requires a person detained by the authorities to be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined.

Tags: ***** this fir a kerry oan, evil american politics, evil british politics

04:53 pm: Why We Need Government
From Log of Smallship One - Passionate and Confused, via lexin:

We need some sort of central organisation whose job is to spend the money we pay to it on the things that we need. Not to make money, not to be profitable, not to be competitive in the fucking free market. We need a fucking government. And it needs to be responsible for the post office, and the maintenance of the water supply, and the same for gas, and electricity, and the fucking railways and the fucking roads and the provision of houses for people to fucking well live in. All the rest we can work out for ourselves. I'll even let them off the telephones, since that seems to be working all right at the moment, but for the things I have listed we need a body that will provide them because it has NO FUCKING CHOICE but to provide them. Because that is what it's FOR.

Yes.

I don't want an independent Scotland, as I said here, because basically I like being part of the union - but I am glad we have the Scottish Parliament to be a devolutionary bulwark against some of the madder floods of the bloody Thatcherite philosophy that's been bleeding acid over UK government since 1979.

Tags: evil british politics, powerful speech vs. powerless silence, scottish politics

09:01 am: EHRC whacks BNP
The British National Party is a racist organisation: membership is restricted to "indigenous white Britons", and to work for the BNP, you must show a membership number. There are other political parties with almost-as-dubious manifestos, but the BNP is frankly and openly the worst organisation with the most power: two members have been elected to seats in the European Parliament.

The EHRC wrote to Mr Griffin on June 23rd that it believed the BNP fell foul of the law in its race-based membership policy, its hiring (which appears to be restricted to party members) and what the EHRC interpreted as hints that the party would not provide an equal service to constituents of all races. Unless the BNP changes its ways by July 20th, the watchdog will seek a court order to force it to; if the party held that in contempt it could face fines, imprisonment—and publicity. cite

This article in the Guardian explains quite well why this hasn't happened earlier.

My mum said yesterday "but what about the people who elected them who now won't be represented?" and I said "I don't care!" and in fact I don't - if you vote for a criminally racist party and you waste your vote, tough cookies! - but also, regardless, they'll have six other MEPs in the European Parliament, even if the two they voted for have been jailed or made bankrupt.



Tags: evil british politics

09:34 am: MPs expenses
I just looked up the expenses claims for my MP, for 2004-2008, and pretty much (a) I don't think he has anything to worry about (b) Whatever my feelings about the expenses claims system*, the claims he turned in look like he was operating within the rules: he claimed for his second home in London, including the TV licence, the utilities, a cleaner, and various undetailed claims for repairs and decoration (that I think add up to less than £2K over a 4 year period, but no single item looks outright unreasonable: plus there's a "legal fees" expense claim which he already paid back part of), he claimed for a laptop computer (paying the going rate for a decent model), he buys all the local magazines/newspapers and has an account with a Stockbridge newsagent that looks like all the national newspapers - and he routinely claimed between £10 and £40 a month for food**. (Which suggests to me that he claimed for tea/coffee when meeting with constituents - which if so, seems absolutely reasonable.)

Certainly what he claimed could all readily be justified under the incredibly vague rule of "I confirm that I incurred these costs wholly, exclusively and necessarily to enable me to stay overnight away from my only or main home for the purpose of performing my duties as a Member of Parliament". The problem here is the vagueness of it - most companies, when you claim for travel expenses, have very detailed and pretty stringent rules about what you can claim and what you can't.

When staying in a hotel on Compaq expenses, I found - looking up the rules - that Compaq regarded it as reasonable that I should have wine (or beer/cider) with my evening meal, plus an aperitif if I wanted one, but had a given limit - expressed as a percentage of the total cost of the meal - on the cost of the wine/aperitif. I remember as well that they were clear about travel expenses: if Compaq were paying for a transatlantic flight, they'd pay for their employee to travel business class: if employee wanted spouse to go with (same-sex partners not mentioned, but this was 1999) then they could switch their tickets to tourist class and both travel tourist on Compaq, if that cost the same as a business-class ticket: if it cost more, the couple paid the extra, unless the trip was going to last more than x weeks, in which case see spouse travelling allowance. I read through the rules the first time I stayed in France on expenses: I looked things up whenever I had a query: and discovered, when I was staying with a couple of friends in London to attend a course Compaq were paying for, that because I was saving Compaq the expense of a daily ticket to London at peak time, I could take my hosts out for a meal and charge it to expenses, limit being up to the amount I was saving Compaq. I never had any trouble working out what I could claim for and what I couldn't: the chief trouble with the expenses was always getting the receipts back to admin in time to have them paid before the credit card bill came due, because while you could claim for interest due on unpaid expenses as an additional expense, it was (we all agreed) just adding an extra layer of complication.

*Complicated. It's certainly been used as a salary top-up. And it's not as if MPs are underpaid: a backbench MP gets £64,766. I feel that if taxpayers are paying all the damn expenses of a second home in London, when it's sold the money should go back to the state, or the flat should fall into the possession of Parliament (and could then be rented out to future MPs) but: he was claiming, from the expenses sheets, for the basic running costs.

**Alex Salmond, First Minister for Scotland and extremely-part time MP for Banff and Buchan, claims his food expenses each month are frequently as much as £400 - up to £400, MPs don't have to show receipts or justify it in any way, just write £400 on the form and get the cheque. Meh.




Tags: evil american politics, evil british politics, london, scottish politics

01:20 pm: Atheist Toast, Satire, Elephants

Because Toast is Truth.

Binyam Mohamed's statement on release:

I have been through an experience that I never thought to encounter in my darkest nightmares. Before this ordeal, "torture" was an abstract word to me. I could never have imagined that I would be its victim. It is still difficult for me to believe that I was abducted, hauled from one country to the next, and tortured in medieval ways – all orchestrated by the United States government.

While I want to recover, and put it all as far in my past as I can, I also know I have an obligation to the people who still remain in those torture chambers. My own despair was greatest when I thought that everyone had abandoned me. I have a duty to make sure that nobody else is forgotten.

Also, Barbara Ehrenrich on Binyam Mohamed:

I am not histrionic enough to imagine myself in any way responsible for the torments suffered by Mohamed and Padilla - at least no more responsible than any other American who failed to rise up in revolutionary anger against the Bush terror regime. No, I'm too busy seething over another irony: Whenever I've complained about my country's torturings, renderings, detentions, etc., there's always been some smug bastard ready to respond that these measures are what guarantee smart-alecky writers like myself our freedom of speech. Well, we had a government so vicious and impenetrably stupid that it managed to take my freedom of speech and turn it into someone else's living hell.

If the Great British Circus comes to where you live, please boycott it. Elephants do not belong in circuses.

Tell me five things you associate with me.

Tags: atheistical, elephants, evil american politics, evil british politics

10:15 pm: The 2008 meme
( it was 365 days )

Tags: 3 are bastards, bloody job, bob, cats, evil british politics, meme meme meme, working at the forest, worrying about my cats

11:11 am: Things that I would like to consider about British politics, should I get around to writing them
( 10 things to think about and in the darkness bind them )

Tags: evil british politics, i am a feminist, lists, scottish politics

11:28 am: Overheard in the Forest Cafe: and thoughts about the hierarchy of equality
Man, furiously: "And now a court says I can't see my kids!"
Other man, sympathetically: "Mumble mumble, rough, mumble, man, mumble rhubarb rhubarb."
Man, furiously explaining: "There's an exclusion order! If I go near them I could get arrested! My own kids!"
Other man, still sympathetically: "Mumble mumble rhubarb rhubarb."
Man, even more furiously: "And I've still got to pay! Why the hell do I have to pay if I can't see my kids!"
Other man, still sympathetically though his mumbles were getting shorter and shorter: "Mumble rhubarb."
Me, cravenly: *silence*

I was standing at the computer, and the two men were sitting at the table behind me (or possibly, going through the Free Shop stuff, I didn't turn to see).

What is an exclusion order? (from Shelter):

An exclusion order is a court order that suspends the right of a married person, civil partner or cohabitee to live in the family home. You can apply for an exclusion order if your spouse or partner has done or is threatening to do something that has harmed or would harm you or your children either physically or mentally. This will probably need to be more than one isolated incident that was out of character. It can be difficult to get an exclusion order and it will depend on your individual circumstances.

I don't want to say anything like "The courts don't make mistakes!" etc, but the fact is: there is a strong principle in the UK, in European law in general, that a parent has not just the right but the obligation to get to spend time with his kids. (I say "his" advisedly: mothers, having usually been the primary caretakers from birth, and in general remaining so even after a relationship splits, won't usually have the same difficulties in exercising this obligation.)

Courts don't serve an exclusion order lightly. If the man had been served with an exclusion order it was probably because he had, more than once, turned up at the family home since he and his partner split, and terrified the hell out of her and the children - terrified at least, and possibly struck his ex-partner or their children. The police had probably been called, at least once, to get him to leave. Or it could be worse. And given the way this man was behaving in the Forest, yelling and scaring his ex and his children seemed certain, and the rage in his voice made it more certain.

I wouldn't ordinarily even have considered joining in a conversation that I was not included in, but the Forest is one of those places where you can. But as the only things I would have had to say would have been on the lines of "Yes, you still have to support your children because their legal right to your support isn't tied to or affected by your legal right to see them, which it sounds like you've voided by your own fault" the main reason I didn't say any of that was because I was chickenshit.

There are seven equality strands (six recognised, but seven ought to be): race/ethnicity, religion/belief, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and poverty.

( And while there are individual differences, individual circumstances, it is surprising how consistent we are in Western culture about what order it's acceptable to be openly prejudiced: poverty, age, gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, gender, religion, race. )

Having sorted all this out in my head - and I will accept agreement, disagreement, re-ordering, shuffling, in comments - looking at my list, which is based on "what I feel the situation to be in Scotland at this time", I notice that it's very strongly based on legislation and law enforcement. It's been illegal since 1975 to incite hatred on the grounds of race; anti-sectarianism has been strongly enforced in Scotland, both socially and legally, precisely because Protestant and Catholic have been (and are) big issues for so long. (Edinburgh and Glasgow, and other cities in Scotland, have a city football team for the Protestants, a city football team for the Catholics, and if the city's big enough, a third team for - as a Catholic fan of Partick Thistle told me - the ones who don't like getting beaten up.)

There is no legislation banning incitement of hatred against people for their gender or their sexual orientation or their disability. (There might be in England and Wales soon, for sexual orientation at least, but there isn't in Scotland, nor likely to be.) There is a kind of fumbling recognition that it's not a good thing, expressed in some local authority guidelines and government language, but no legislation.

Not only is there no legislation about it, it's actually considered a positively good thing for children to be harassed/bullied about their gender identity, because of course children need to learn to conform.

No one talks about the problem of inciting hatred against people because of their income level at all. Contempt for people on a low income is considered, perhaps not positively good, but perfectly normal.

Which is worth thinking about, when considering if legislation will "make a difference". Eventually it will, though expecting instant results is not something that happens. A generation or two who grow up under the new legislation grow up at least knowing that it's unacceptable to express such hatred. Which is a step in itself, as I think anyone would agree who has ever been made uncomfortable by open expression of prejudice by someone who sees nothing wrong with it...

Tags: evil british politics, i am a feminist, outcasts should stick together, powerful speech vs. powerless silence, scottish politics, working at the forest

01:53 pm: The cost of the Olympics
Gardens destroyed:

Halfway up Waterden Road in Hackney Wick, east London, down an alley between a bus depot and a cash-and-carry and across a little bridge over the river Lea, are the Manor Garden allotments. Or at least, that is where they were, until two months ago. Now, if you walk down Waterden Road, you arrive at the 10ft-high blue fence and steel gates of the Olympic Park, and you can go no further. The 87 allotments, bounded on both sides by water, overflowing with potatoes and tomatoes, sweetcorn and aubergines, wild plum trees and leafy chard, with figs, chillies and big, bobbing heads of fennel, are abandoned; they will make way, come 2012, for a concourse between the hockey stadium, the velodrome and the BMX venue, and for a giant TV screen for non-ticket holders.

Following a battle that very nearly ended in court, the London Development Authority agreed to come up with a replacement site. This proved to be in Waltham Forest, beside a sliproad leading on to the M11, with no access by public transport. The Manor Garden plotholders, the Clarks included, are supposed to pick up their keys this month. Nobody seems very enthusiastic about it, nor very reassured by the LDA's promise that they will be able to return to within the boundaries of the Olympic park once the games are over, although not to the same spot.

Hassan Ali, 65, gardened there for 17 years:

"The allotment was wonderful, beautiful - like an island, with big trees, apples and peaches. I have a fig tree I planted 16 years ago, now it's 30ft high, and what figs! Everyone loved my figs. When I got a plot 17 years ago, Reg was my guide. He would say how to grow things we didn't know how to grow, how deep to plant the potatoes. The allotment's so social - always dinners, barbecues and parties. I think the very best thing in this world would be if everyone had a little bit of land and grew their food."

Reg Hawkins, 76, gardened there for 55 years:

"My father was at Manor Gardens before me. That's more than 70 years our family has been working that soil. There's a lot of history, a lot of memories. And such good people: from East Enders to Ugandans, Jamaicans, Greeks, you name it. But everyone was always happy to do a bit of watering, share seeds - and cook! They should have called Hassan's shed Hassan's Cafe, there were so many people in there being fed."

The allotments have been there for nearly 90 years: all that treasure of work stored up in rich soil will have been buried for a road to the 2012 Olympics, and Hassan's fig tree will have been cut down.

A common treasury:

A truly Green suggestion by another plotholder, Julie Sumner, an antenatal course supervisor in the NHS proposed a novel form of sponsorship: the plots could feed the athletes of one national team. ‘It would have to be a very small country with not too many participants, but we probably have enough of a selection to keep anyone happy and fit, no matter where they’re from.’ Naturally, this was rejected by the Olympic Committee.

Bulldoze this.

Tags: destruction of good land, evil british politics, green in the city, olympic stupidity

08:51 pm: Half a lifetime...
I am thirty-eight, nearly thirty-nine.

( when I was eighteen )

( ...and today )

Tags: angry queer, being queer, evil british politics, sometimes i love my job

05:26 pm: Successive reactions to the bombing
1. Call Catmunk. It took me fifteen minutes to make sure that my closer-than-brother was okay, and his partner, (when they go to work by Underground, they pass through Aldgate East) but he was.

2. Check livejournal. Gradually over the day establish that (I think) everyone else whom I was worried about was, in fact, OK. (My favourite post is still lexin's, one of the first.)

3. Snigger at the first black joke I saw made about it. (It had to do with Chirac probably being responsible because London got the Olympics. You had to be there.)

4. And the next one. ("Yeah, it sure looked like power surges... until the first bus blew up.)

5. Call my brother, once I could locate him: yes, he's okay, too.

6. And yeah, let's still get out of Iraq at the end of this year. That's what we were pushing for before today: let's not let whoever was responsible for this attack change our minds.

Tags: evil british politics, family stuff, lol!, london

10:18 am: I kept reading this fantasy novel one time, long past the time when it got boring
...because in the first chapter, a very, very distant heir to the throne arranged to have practically the entire royal family, all the heirs who were closer than him, killed in a highly suspicious tragic accident. (I think the roof of a temple fell in.)

And I thought: "What a good idea!" No more wittering about the British Royal Family, if everyone's gone except for the 66th heir who's a Californian surfer and doesn't want to move back to the UK, or something like that.

Well, all right, I'd be quite happy if they were abducted by aliens instead. I should hate to see Westminster Abbey go.

This post inspired by the second person on my friends-list to post about that thing. You know who you are.

Tags: evil british politics

07:02 pm: iocaine powder
When I was very young (okay, I can't remember exactly how old, but somewhere around 10) I figured out how to win at Scissors, Paper, Stone.

I noticed that people (or at least, my brother and my sister) instinctively choose the one that would beat their opponent's choice last time. So if you're aware of this, you can choose the one that will beat the one that would beat your own choice last time. So that if on Turn 1 I chose Rock and my sister or my brother had chosen Scissors, on Turn 2 they would choose Paper, so I would choose Scissors. On Turn 3 they would choose Rock, so I would choose Paper. And so on. On Turn 4 they would choose Scissors, so I would choose Rock.

Then I noticed that if you repeatedly do this, after a while they notice that you always choose what they chose last time. So then they start choosing the one that will beat the choice they made last time, and at that point, I start choosing the one that will beat the one that will beat the choice they made last time. So on Turn 5 they would choose Rock, and I would choose Scissors, so they'd win that turn. Then I'd play randomly till I won a round: say on Turn 8 I chose Paper and they chose Rock. Next turn they'd think I'd choose Rock, so they'd choose Paper, so I'd choose scissors.

This is a natural progression from doublethink to triplethink. I remember getting it up to quadruple think in a couple of games (after a while I could tell when my siblings thought they'd figured out the pattern to my choices: my sister would bounce and my brother would frown). It was rather like the state of mind Vizzini got into in The Princess Bride just before he died, only it had to be silent: the whole point was not to admit that I was thinking hard, but pretend that I was just making consistently lucky guesses.

After a while, they wouldn't play Scissors, Paper, Stone with me at all, which is the sibling-equivalent of iocaine powder. And these days I doubt if I would bother. Long train journeys stopped being so hellishly boring once I got to pack enough books for the whole trip.

But then again, who knows? I still like to win. And I still like figuring things in my head extremely fast while keeping a bland and deceptive face on.

Anyway, if I knew any committed Tory party members I would play Scissors Paper Stone with them. "Yes, I think Iain Duncan Smith should go. No one wants him. No one ever wanted him. He's completely useless. I think you should have another leadership campaign."

That would be doublethink.

Triplethink would be telling them to keep him.

Tags: evil british politics, family stuff

07:39 am: It is NOT 1 January 1980, because if it were I would be 12
Last night my computer crashed. This morning my computer thought that it was New Year's Day, 1980, 23:23. (Which is the time my computer crashed, though not the date.) I first realised this when I switched on and the computer told me that it had automatically updated my clock for Daylight Savings Time (which it would have to, if it were January and I hadn't switched my computer on since the 2nd of October) and would I confirm it was correct.

And I got up and got halfway through to the sitting-room to turn my TV on to check whether it was Daylight Savings Morning, before I could slap myself and point out to myself that it's Friday morning, not Sunday morning, and the clocks never go back on a Thursday night, always on a Saturday.

Then I checked the date and discovered that it was 1980 again, and as I did not want to go through my teens once more, nor to experience another 17 years of Conservative government, I quickly fast-forwarded through time to correct the situation. You should all be very grateful to me, especially if you weren't born yet.

It is now 07:39 on 3 October 2003. Should I be worried about my computer's sudden refusal to recognise reality?

Tags: computer disasters, evil british politics, history

08:14 pm: WAR! Gonnie No Dae That!
It was big. The police estimate 61 000: the organisers estimated more like 90 000. Whichever number is more correct, it was certainly the biggest political demonstration in Scotland that I've ever seen (someone said, the biggest one in more than a century).

( what happened at the rally in Glasgow: a steward's eye view )

A long day, but a good one.

Propped against the wall to remind me: How did our oil get under their sand?

Tags: evil american politics, evil british politics, iraq, war