MatGB—Knowledge is underrated
Life, the universe and everything. Politics, geekery and adapting to life in Yorkshire. With occasional outbursts of intelligence.
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1. Does it have at least two women in it,See? How easy is that to fulfil as an objective? Everything should pass that one, right? Shame it's not true. Shame that, in reality, a huge amount of stuff, including stuff with strong female lead characters, fails it. Even authors that consciously try to ensure their work isn't sexist manage to fail it regularly, as Charlie Stross has found out. It seems though, that despite many of the writers gender neutrality failings, Doctor Who doesn't do too badly, even taking into account the added complication of the significant central character being male.
2. Who [at some point] talk to each other,
3. About something besides a man.
Of course, the test isn't perfect—there are some perfectly good films where none of the characters are realistic, male or female, and in some it would be innapropriate to try to fulfil it. But for most shows or films, that are supposedley 'realistic', don't you think it should be a fairly normal thing to manage? Charlie's conclusion goes further than I think I would, but he's probably not too far off[2]:
The current decade is characterized by ... a socially conservative culture, of retreat from liberalism, and a strong anti-feminist backlash. Our popular media, far from being the bastions of liberal values ... are actually belwethers of popular culture, ... reflecting our culture's normative values back at us ... What they're showing this decade is really rather disturbing if you happen to agree with the core feminist ideological belief that women are real people too, not just baby factories and sex objects.Given that I watch a lot less TV than most people, and even fewer films, is he right?
TV has always been bad ... but of late, the messages coming at us out of the mass media are nothing short of toxic. If movies and TV objectified people of colour the way they do women, the only reasonable conclusion one could draw would be that a concerted propaganda campaign was under way to return us to the unquestioned institutional racism of the 1950s.
[1] Or scary, or just Plain Wrong, depending on how bad the film or show in question actually is. I'm pretty sure it was
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innerbrat that first made me aware of it.[2] I'm excising a lot of text from this quote, marked by elipses, I do think the whole post is worth reading in its own right though.
when Obama meets Gordon Brown next week it's going to make Brown feel even worse. Maybe Obama will advise him "Gordon, you need to come up with a snappy three-word slogan that sums up your demeanour, the way I did with 'Yes we can'." And as a result the Labour Party's slogan for the next election will be "Where am I?"Sounds about right for the moment. Or in the aftermath, regarding their MPs--"where'd they go?"...
In 1992 Tony Blair mounted a daring expedition from Labour's heartlands to capture as much enemy territory as he could. Confronted by a worn out and divided enemy his raid was as successful as it was audacious. He managed to capture vast swaths of formerly Tory territory sweeping all before him like an all conquering Caesar.Go read the rest. Seriously. You have to excuse the typos and spelling, the best spell checkers can only help dyslexia so much at times, but the whole post is both spot on and very well observed.
Like Caesar Blair was eventually stabbed in the back by those that he had once thought his closest allies, but unlike Caesar the band that he was leading was not safe in their own territory at the time. They where still deep in the enemies native territory and desperately trying to find ways to hold their position.
Labour is now under Blair's rather less able former adjutant have found themselves, un-supplied, surrounded, and cut off from their reserves.
I have, as it happens, been to the Teotoberg site, Arne took myself and
the_prince there when we stayed on after a tournament he organised, very scary to see how little space the Romans had to try to fight in, one of the best implemented ambushes in military history methinks.A personal computer holding sensitive documents relating to defence and extremism has been stolen from Hazel Blears' constituency office in Salford.On the one hand, crime, break in, naughty theives, get 'em. On the other, what was she doing leaving a laptop full of confidential data in her constituency office? Oh, wait, smug, complacent, convinced of her own rightness Blears. It didn't occur to her the rules her Govt itself created were there for a fucking reason.
The theft may mean the communities secretary has broken rules on the handling of restricted government information, the BBC has learned.
ETA: Oh, what a surprise—it wasn't her fault,t hey were emailed to her by a flunky, and her chief bean counter has taken full responsibility:
Thankfully no damage has been done since the documents sent to her were not classified as secret or top secret. And in any event the computer was password protected ... I take full responsibility for ensuring this is done.Completely ignored as an issue at PMQs as well FFS.
Via and also.
ETA Jennie has more. I hate to say this, but Labour would be better off with McKenzie as an independent candidate, Davis's vote is partially partizan lock 'em up Tories (not all Conservatives are Tories, really must write that post), and while Davis will get a big vote, his 'core support' might split off on the single issue to back Kelvin, especially with a media circus.
Interesting times. Is there a train station in town? If Kelvin runs, might need to actually go campaign against the git.
ETA 2: Iain has done the research I planned to do tomorrow, and has a roundup of other principled MP resignations, including a fair few I'd not even heard of. Dick Taverne and Tony Benn I knew of but some of the others are interesting.
[1] Approx 20 minutes in on the iPlayer, after he drones on about Wade's party at Rupert's
Clegg is 100% correct
That was what I was going to suggest should happen, Labour were a distant third last time but as this is a single issue resignation in order to reinforce there is no mandate for the use of the Parliament Act, and Lib Dem party policy agrees completely with DD's stance, Clegg is correct to suggest no candidate. I believe that constitutionally the local party should be consulted, and I strongly hope that Haltemprice and Howden Lib Dems will not only acquiesce, but will also get out and back him on the campaign trail to strongly reinforce and fight on the issue.Dodgy polls asking push questions show there is support for the 42 days measure, but an uninformed opinion based on a question that summarises the issue isn't enough.
I never thought I'd say this, but David Davis just went a long way up in my estimation.
The Government has been saying, in a catchy, misleading piece of spin: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” This is a demagogue's trick. We do have something to fear - the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies.Why is it scary? Because it's bloody John Major, he who was Prime Minister when I was 18, he who I campaigned against in '92 and '97, he who resigned and put himself up for re election when I was at Glastonbury (and Jarvis mentioned it on stage to a massive cheer). It shows how far this Govt has gone from it's early promise that a liberal socialist like me can end up agreeing with a former Tory Prime Minister on a key plank of Govt legislation. Lest we forget, this is a man who was chairing a Cabinet meeting when the IRA mortar bombed his home & office, a man whose party and friends had nearly been destroyed by terrorists when they blew up Brighton. When he says this is an unnecessary step too far? For fucks sake Gordon, wake up and smell the coffee.
This is not a United Kingdom that I recognise and Parliament should not accept it.
Jennie has more:
The debate before the house is not referring to the total period a person can be kept inside before they have to be released. This is, in fact, about whether or not we should have 42 days of imprisonment for people before they are even told what they are supposed to have done wrong.42 days detention for being an alleged terrorist. Note the definition of terrorism includes a lot of animal rights activism and similar these days as well.
Gah!
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This, is ridiculous. Completely and utterly stupid. The paranoia at LAX when I was there in 2002 was both palpable and misplaced, but a t-shirt with a picture of a grrt big robot now isn't allowed? They'll be banning Oscar Wilde quotes next
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Complete with added bonus art auction for the Alzheimers trust. This are Good
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This is a rather cool thing to be doingâ”a bunch of big name SF authors have signed a vinyl MonQee (no, I'd not heard of them either) and are auctioning it off for the Match it For Pratchett thing. Which we like.
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And here are some pictures and a list of authors for it.
About
This is my personal general interest journal where I write about or link to whatever I've fond that amused, intrigued or enraged me at the time. I'm a committed liberal, equalist and atheist, but I really like it when people can demonstrate I'm wrong, and have close friends with whom I completely disagree on some if not all of those points.
There probably ought to be a Creative Commons licence in here somewhere but in the meantime consider this permission to quote me (link) & link to what I write.
If you decide to keep reading, please do say hello, let me know where you found me from, etc. I promise not to bite (well, unless you want me to...)
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