The Uncertainty Principle

At age 19 I was kidnapped by turkish pirates/ Mediterranean thugs/ After some torture they considered me their mascot/ Cypriotic good luck

I wanted to take down the Dispatches that C4 showed on Monday about ‘The Dirty Tricks of new labour’ or some such.

Any self-proclaimed ‘hard hitting’ political documentary will always struggle to put across its arguments without sounding pretentious or pious. Nevertheless, Jenny Kleeman’s dulcet tones were edged with desperation. What was billed as an expose of the dirty tricks that got Labour back in power uncovered the following:

FACT! New Labour press teams circulate templates of letters for supporters to fill out and submit to local paper letters pages. The templates include grotesque and incendiary phrases like “I believe the true conditions of the NHS has been misrepresented in your article…”

FACT! At public appearances during the election campaign, known young Labour supporters were chosen over any random chuff of the general public to shake hands with the Prime Minister.

Whoa! It’s 1984! We’re living in the Matrix! Wake up United Kingdom you are being manipulated! Someone set up a message board where we can exchange our semi-literate and mixed-case conspiracy theories with each other! Quick!

The Labour party didn’t dignify it with a response. Shame. They could have said something along the lines of, “We’re genuinely concerned about the prospect that our load of zealous, slightly geeky local agents are carrying out their duties so effectively. We will conduct a full investigation”.

I would make the following two points of considered analysis.

1. Have you ever read the letters page in your local paper? I think it is an excellent idea to have a basic template of a letter for supporters, who under their own will and volition can choose to fill out and send in. This will help the clarity of their argument and reduce the space taken up by feeble poetry and letters that read, “Why won’t the government cull badgers? They all have TB! I mean, I pay my taxes. You know what’ll happen if we don’t cull Badgers? The Nazis, that’s what”.

2. Obviously I am too windswept and interesting to dally in party politics, but let’s say I was a party leader. On day one of the election campaign, right after elevenses, one of the first things I would expect a competent press and PR team to do is ensure that any public photo-op with me in it is populated by young, photogenic sycophants keen to shake me by the hand. Any handler who let a bunch of slack-jawed winging SWPers near me when I was trying to win votes would be out of a job. Pronto.

Mind you, I would also try and sack anyone who, when I requested a cheese sandwich, gave me one in which the cheese is grated rather than sliced. Grated cheese? In a sandwich? It will fall apart, and the pleasing texture of the cheese will be lost. What do you take me for? A Visigoth?*

*It is probably a good idea I never get any managerial responsibility. I may also be quite tired.

Some people judge and they just guess the rest / they can't understand - that don't mean that you're blessed

Spotted in gym yesterday: large man, probably late twenties, jogging on treadmill. Tattoo on arm stretching from shoulder to elbow and bicep to tricep - a line drawing of naked female stripper with dollar-bill-stuffed-garter detail. No text.

Misogynist? Almost certainly. But brave nonetheless. Made a difference from the "Arsenal" in gothic script guy, who I saw a few months ago.

I have never wanted to get a tattoo, permanent or otherwise. That said, when I was about fourteen I probably told someone that I would endorse a small tattoo of a barcode on the back of my neck. No doubt, I imagined I would be making some kind of "statement" about "society" by doing this.

I thought the naked lady tattoo guy was brave, as I guess the idea of a tattoo is to make some universally valid and applicable personal statement.

For instance, let's take the 'Arsenal' in gothic script. I am guessing he means "I endorse Arsenal football club proudly and publicly. This is an external form of an invisible devotion that, like my love of the North London team will not fade with age or the decline of my faculties".

Many favour Celtic bands round their limbs: "Despite my English pallor I am aware and proud of a complex and deep cultural heritage. I am probably more interesting than you think".

Others favour Chinese, runic script or horoscope signs: "beneath this muscular/fleshy exterior, I am a man/woman of profound spirituality and genuinely believe beyond all the detritus of daily life there is immutable truths of love, justice and human destiny. I am also probably more interesting than people think".

Some other people just get tattoos for decoration, but I don't really have an opinion on that.

Gym tattoo guy was playing them at their own game. His screamed, "I enjoy the naked female form. I am a towering hunk of masculine energy and could probably use my economic power in tandem with my sexual and physical power in this capitalist world to buy and sell women like so many bagatelles"

Most people could stitch together a personal truism with words. I, for instance, could have the shield, with the slogan "guilty of being 'West Country'" on one of my scrawny and brittle upper arms; "grasping for a tradition"; "Machiavelli: but don't forget the Discourses!". But what if you were confined to single image only? That's a tricky one.

There's not that much to us / I hide the little with a lot / You still expect a lovely fuss / After showing all you've got

Met up with Alistair and Marty last night. They are my new favourite people. God bless you, The Internet for helping make this happen. Actually, don't listen to Fancyapint.com; The Enterprise works well. Next time its Jenga and or some serious Pursuits.

Dressing down on Fridays now, so naturally I wore a hooded-top into work on a point of principle.

Yes it was warm this morning. Yes I missed my train. Yes I baked on the tube, but a stand has to be made.

What is Prescott playing at? I can understand one shopping centre making moves against young ruffians of South-South London/ Kent. Though by commenting on it favourably he seems to be suggesting it makes sense for a national government to consider this as a policy. Britain: forward not back. Britain: The Man versus the Kids.

Yes, gangs of youths in hoodies with 'their boredom and their vacant stares' are intimidating. But who thinks the Everlast jumpers are the deciding factor?

I can imagine the bluff Prescott in the revolutionary committees of 1790s France;

"Look Lads, you need some common sense. Just ban people from not wearing
breeches and will soon have this sans-culottes nonsense done away with.
Hmm? What do you mean 'Jacobins'? What do you mean 'the long term decline
in the representative power of absolute monarchies'? What do you mean 'social
stasis caused by patronage blocking promotion of the bourgeois' I am
telling you, just stop them wearing trousers!"

(Mighty Labour government, feel the roar of my satire)

And now Andrew Marr is off is he? I will miss him a great deal. But at least he'll provide now another reason other than Popworld to get up at a reasonable hour on Sundays.

So many haters are clocking our figures / So many haters don't like us rakin’ papers

This was going to be an exorbitantly long post haranguing old school Lefties for wanting to kick out Blair.

I was going to point out that those MPs calling for blood aren’t the ’92 or ’97 intake that only know Labour on the ascendant. They are people who have seen the centre and left tear themselves apart and really should know better.

I would like to dismiss these people as those Labour MPs seeking to objectify their own self-loathing caused by voting for the war and foundation hospitals etc. But their ranks include people like Bob Marshall-Andrews who I really respect. To these people I would make the following cogent argument:

a) If you think that the electorate returning a reinvigorated Tory opposition
over the Lib Dems is a sign they favour an hard line socialist future I feel you
are more inward-looking than I had hitherto suspected.
b) You still have a majority of 66; and
c) What are you talking about?

Like I said, I was going to go into great details about this. However, I have just heard the in this year’s Eurovision Song contest, Switzerland will be represented by Estonian Girl Band, Vanilla Ninja

This is either the best thing ever, or it isn’t. Until I have heard the song it will be difficult to tell.

I am aware that this blog is permanently on the verge of imitating my real life conversation and just descending into an inane series of quotes, like some freshers’ week undergraduate desperate to bond with other males and lacking chat of his own. Sadly this doesn’t stop this Eurovision vignette reminding me of my favourite deleted scene from Napoleon Dynamite:

Don: I could kick you butt, Napoleon, so I'd shut up.
Napoleon: Why don't you go tell your Mom to shut up!
Don: What did you say?
Napoleon: Whatever I feel like I wanna say!
Don: Did you say something about my Mom?
Napoleon: Maybe I did, maybe I didn't!
Don: Do you wanna die Napoleon?
Napoleon: Yeah right, who's the only one here that knows illegal ninja moves from the Government?

the vow that we made/ you broke it in two/ but that don't stop me from loving you

A few months ago, I tried to get my mate John out for a drink. I hadn't seen him for ages. A life-long London-living Blackburn fan early season ,running out of PhD funding, John had several reasons to be downcast. He declined my invitation full of verve and vigor however. John was apparently delighted that he was off to see his beloved Blackburn 'get spanked by Arsenal'. John is a true fan; able to appreciate a good narrative and the spectacle of a team on top form even it it involved defeat for his tribe.

I got a feeling similar to John's as I watched David Aaronovitch take apart John Harris at the Demos event, 'Who do we vote for now?'. John Harris was impassioned and engaging but gave the kind of pub-chat so many of us have over the last year; "I bloody love labour, but foundation hospitals? City Academies? Has the world gone mad?"

Aaronovitch was on flying form. Two beautiful young posh/scruffy Labourites with private-school skin suggested that the young left would be invigorated once Brown supplanted Blair. Aaronovitch pushed them, and built up to a remarkable finish; proud and articulate he pointed to the rising minimum wage, unmatched investment in the public services and Africa and development being put at the top of the political agenda, something the so-called "Left" had been campaigning for decades on. He fumed,