USA vs. England: loser gets to clean up the oil spill.
— John Barrett.
For starters, every article about the PM should start, ‘Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, who has a glass eye…’ to really reinforce the point. And in the debate, Brown, the Prime Minister, who has a glass eye, should make a much stronger attempt to use the eye to his advantage.
A few suggestions. He could pop it out and stick it on the lectern looking up at Cameron while the Tory is talking. Or toss it casually from hand to hand while delivering his own speeches. Perhaps he could bounce it against his flexed bicep and into his outstretched hand in a flamboyant gesture that would manage to be both insouciant and intimidating. Watch his poll ratings climb! A namby-pamby nanny-bred nincompoop like Cameron would be terrified.
Better still, Brown could keep the eye in, take a dart to the debate and then just tap it casually against the glass eye whenever Cameron is speaking.
— via Peter Watts
The Foreign Secretary finished his remarks a little while ago, and — skipping past audience questions, as forums at the JFK Library have had the effect of cultivating that habit — here are a few notes I jotted down.
He is the first British cabinet secretary to visit MIT since Winston Churchill in 1949. His talk was on ‘how to win the war in Afghanistan’ and re-iterated his push for a diplomatic solution.
He noted the historical parallels between Britain and Russia both concluding — in the 1920’s and 1980’s, respectively — that a political solution with external subsidies was the way to go, though it was the elimination of external subsidies that fueled destabilization.
(If you want to read more thorough accounts of it — and the history of Afghanistan in general — go check out this blog by Adam Curtis or the book After the Taliban by Neamatollah Nojumi, Dyan Mazurana, and Elizabeth Stites.)
He says that the Afghans are tired of decades fighting, that a recent poll suggests that only 6% of the population wants the Taliban back, that 5 million refugees have returned to the country (though security is still a high concern — compare that to the recent Iraqi election), and that the army is currently 100,000 strong and is expected to grow by 1/3 by the end of December of this year.
Current education levels place 7,000,000 children in school, 1/3 of them girls.
95% of the population sees corruption as a problem, each Afghan paying up to $100 a year to corrupt officials.
“The Great Consultation” — aimed at kick-starting the ‘reconciliation’/re-integration process in the country — starts on April 29th, and the secretary had four recommendations.
1. Make arrangements to ensure that provincial groups have a greater say in the political process.
2. Empower provincial/district governors.
3. There should be a new dispensation between Parliament and the President to encourage a greater degree of give-and-take and foster a constructive opposition.
4. Tackle corruption. Tackle corruption. Tackle corruption.
Late update: an editorial from The Guardian. The Globe’s coverage.
London. via aka Jon Spece.
Late update — Laughing Squid: An In-Depth Look at the World of Zentai.
One of the books I’m reading right now is the one pictured above (warning: artist recreation — not the actual book), and it’s filled with lots of wonderful nuggets, like —
Maurice (later Lord) Hankey, secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defense, who in December 1916 became Britain’s first (and so far longest-serving) cabinet secretary, later recalled, while carrying out a review of British intelligence in 1940: ‘During the last war I myself was driving an automobile bought by the MI5 and lived on a salary paid by the Germans for … imaginary services.’
… including what looks like a follow-up (no comment regarding the history of Fleet Street or the immediate impulse towards a certain sort of criticism when an organization becomes good at honing in on this kind of thing — in both a narrative and economic sense) :
A TENANT has been evicted from his council flat in South Yorkshire following complaints about his anti-social behaviour. The 25-year-old tenant was turfed out of the Wharncliffe Flats complex in Rotherham town centre, after neighbours reported his foul and abusive language and aggressive attitude towards elderly residents.
via The Mirror:
A cross-dresser given an Asbo for loitering outside a primary school dressed in a schoolgirl uniform has appeared in court after breaking his order three times. Peter Trigger, 60, frightened children as young as five when he wore a mini-skirt and tie and paraded in front of the school gates. Parents complained to police, saying Trigger would bend over, flash his thighs and show he was wearing no underwear. He was given a five-year Asbo in December 2008 banning him from baring his legs in public during the school run.
Caroline and Steve Cartwright’s “unnatural” love-making prompted complaints from neighbours, a postman and a woman taking her child to school. The 48-year-old, from Washington on Wearside, had earlier pleaded guilty to three counts of breaching the Asbo. At Newcastle Crown Court, she was given eight weeks suspended for 12 months and a 12-month supervision order.
During a previous hearing, next door neighbour Rachel O’Connor told the court she was frequently late for work because she overslept having been kept awake most of the night. She said: “The noise sounds like they are both in considerable pain. I cannot describe the noise. I have never ever heard anything like it.”
… Passing sentence, Judge Beatrice Bolton said: “I’ve heard a very short extract of the noise you make and can well see that your neighbours would be upset and distressed by this.
And — lastly — there’s this:
A 21-year-old man from Steyning has been given an ASBO preventing him from drinking in public places. Christopher Hart, of Shooting Field, Steyning, was given the the three year order on Monday (February 1). The conditions of the order mean Hart cannot have an open container of alcohol in any public place in Steyning, apart from pubs, cannot be drunk in public and cannot go onto the Memorial Playing Field.
