Nick Clegg's announcement today

Alan Johnson is a nice guy in some ways, he's like your friend's dad from school, you know the dad of that kid who could play football really well, but obviously he's just way way wrong.

In fact former Home Secretary Johnson's response to Nick Clegg's absolutely correct announcement today, much of which this little blog has campaigned for in the past, just goes to show how dangerously out of touch Johnson and Labour have been on this issue.

And this is what we have been saying here in the past.

Johnson actually calls the decisions to reign in Labour's police state as "rampant hyperbole" and suggests that Clegg has 'joined up different issues' re CCTV, ID Cards, DNA database, Contact Point child database etc.

But the problem is, as we've long talked about here in the past, is that these aren't different disperate issues, they are all part of an all too visible rock-solid trend, where one part of the trend, dangerously appears to reinforce the necessity for another, and that overall dehumanizes and degrades.

And if Johnson can't actually see that, it really does make you wonder about the rest of his judgment and what he was doing in office all that time.

By the way, I think this coalition with the Lib Dems, is all quite healthy and I think in principle a good outcome for voters has come out of the general election here. I really have no complaints about it at this time.

And it's absolutely right that Clegg and the Tories start to dismantle this pile of terrifying nonsense that Labour has willfully and dangerously created and put it where it belongs: in the dustbin of history.

Thank God

Things were looking pretty scary yesterday.

Hung Parliament/Gordon Brown etc

I just saw on BBC News, Gordon Brown has made this statement offering a time table for his standing down, in reality to provide a more inviting proposition for the Liberal Democrats, so that Labour can enter more meaty negotiations with the Liberals.

I'd just like to say this is outrageous. This is dangerous and indulgent nonsense by the Labour Party.

The General Election result, this hung parliament, can not, by any description, be interpreted as a vote for a 'coalition of progressives'' or 'rainbow coalition'.

That's just simply not what was voted for. This is completely illegitimate nonsense.

It is the height of shocking and juvenile opportunism to try to skew this, by interpreting a 'parliamentary democracy' as a green light, described as 'game on' by the SNP for pushing for this insane club, that actually seeks to exclude the party that won the most seats and got the biggest vote. I mean it's just nuts.

(And it's hardly a sign of the integrity of those now supposedely calling for 'more representative, more democratic voting reform'.)

No one voted for another go, another sickly manifestation, just one more time, just once more, of the Labour Party. This time with a rag bag of crappy vaguely-'leftist' novelty parties propping them up who for some childish bizarre reason have some pathological tribe revulsion to the Conservatives.

This isn't a 'mature' democracy. It's a disgrace to democracy. And it needs to stop.

Pope stuff

This is story from a couple of days about a 'media attack' on The Pope ago caught my eye:

"The treatment of the Pope over the child sex-scandal bedevilling the Catholic Church was compared last night to the Holocaust.

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Pope Benedict's personal preacher, made the claim during a Good Friday address at St Peter's Basilica, in the Vatican. He said, as the Pope sat listening, that the attacks on the Pope and the Church were comparable to the persecution suffered by the Jews who "know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence" and are thus "quick to recognise the recurring symptoms"

Apparently the figure concerned has now had to apologize, unsurprisingly, but I think he expected that.

I think what's actually going here is that Father Raniero Cantalamessa was pointing a clear finger at where he sees the problem coming from.

" Secret tape reveals Tory backing for ban on gays"

Just some news from the Guardian/Observer that caught my eye today.

"The Tories were embroiled in a furious row over lesbian and gay rightson Saturday after the shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, was secretly taped suggesting that people who ran bed and breakfasts in their homes should "have the right" to turn away homosexual couples.

The comments, made by Grayling last week to a leading centre-right thinktank, drew an angry response from gay groups and other parties, which said they were evidence that senior figures in David Cameron's party still tolerate prejudice"

At the heart of this issue lies the most fundamental and precious principle we have and that is the right of association. To tamper with this right, to force people together is the most grotesque and stupid attack on the very fabric of what makes a society tolerable at all. The Conservative Party, especially as we approach an election, should be championing that right and being open about protecting it.

No one should be forced to associate with people they don't want to. It needs no explanation, no annotation. No apology. It's a given.

Who is this 'modern' multicultural society actually for ? Is it bringing dignity to anyone, or is it making a ridiculous mockery of everyone ? While we all watch this elephant in the living room no one is supposed to talk about.

Presumably The Guardian/Observer think they have 'discovered' some way to attack the Tories in the lead up to the election but actually have done is shone the light on a slice of reality.

And this problem of creating a kind of ethno-sexual smog of 'tolerance' and 'diversity' is something at some point that, I'm sorry to say, is going to have to be sharply corrected into the reality it needs to be in, rather than the completely grotesque and painfully stupid one it is today.

An Importany Story: Rod Liddle

This was a very important story which I didn't see until today.

Spectator columnist Rod Liddle has become the first blogger to be censured by the Press Complaints Commission.

Spectator columnist Rod Liddle has become the first blogger to be censured by the Press Complaints Commission.

On the Spectator's website, Mr Liddle wrote that the "overwhelming majority" of London's violent crime was carried out by young, African-Caribbean men.

But the PCC ruled the former BBC Radio 4 Today editor's words breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of its code.

It said the "significant ruling" showed publications' websites would be held to the same standards as print editions.

A reader had complained after the article was published in December 2009.
Mr Liddle had written that "the overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community".

Liddle is a very experience journalist of course.

Happy Easter

To all!

J

The Michael Jackson Story: Part 4

Ok we are bit behind schedule here on everything. Sorry guys. Ok so last night I went to see Michael Jackson's This is It movie, which since it was announced I was very anxious to see. This film of course was assembled after Michael's death earlier this year ; made up of rehearsal footage bought by Columbia (Sony) from the series of scheduled performances in London.

I haven't read any reviews of this film, so I'm writing this fresh, and I may well be saying things that some of you may well already have read about.

The film is certainly an appreciated glimpse for fans of these last rehearsals of Michael's and of course it's wonderful to see and hear Michael perform some of his famous songs again.

As we said before Michael Jackson is one of the great figures of the 20th century. A great unifying figure, a great global figure, a figure of enormous inspiration and gifts and creativity.

Although the early reports about these rehearsals were mixed , even quite positive and there was that early clip of "They Don't Care About Us", as a huge fan of MJ, at times in the film Michael does not seem quite prepared for those scheduled 50 performances.

Some people have said that 'well people get older and so on', actually I don't think that's the issue here at all.

I could be misinterpreting this, and some of this rehearsal footage may be of walk throughs rather than with full blown full energy, and it's important people understand that, but in 111 minutes it was difficult to find a Michael of the past there. I felt this was almost a different person in places.

Although there are some wonderful moments of performance, Michael looks almost in some discomfort possibly pain at times rehearsing, sometimes his gestures seem compromised and he appears quite stressed. His voice sounds great and he's extremely cognizant musically about different nuances he wants from his musicians and so on but he does not appear that well in my view and part of him does not look like he wants to be doing this right now. On the other hand he doesn't look like he's about to keel over any second either.

How much years of horrendous stress, allegations, and cocktails of drugs to try to deal with that stress overall (and I don't mean specifically in the case of propofol/Diprivan administration) contributed to all this, is going to remain a serious question.

Michael said he never wanted to tour again and it would kill him to do so, and there is a sense he's being pushed into doing this.

Like I say I haven't read any reviews or commentary about the film, so I don't know what others have written.

I was talking to a few people about it last night afterwards and I found a lot of people are suggesting Michael was murdered by the "New World Order". I recall I started seeing some of these ideas about a month or 2 back on places like YouTube.

Ok, you can look at these things from a point of view, of who killed Michael, and some will wish to, but again Michael is a great angel-like figure. One of the great figures of the age, with tremendous gifts. Like a lot of great iconic figures they tend to leave this world relatively, sometimes very early.

Now there are things that make you very suspicious, and people should certainly explore this if they feel strongly about it, in some loose ways I agree that the 'New World Order' if you want to call it that did kill Michael, but whatever exactly has happened, overall I tend to see this as the above as well.

Michael Jackson's This is It is of course definitely something fans are going to want to see.

"Labour depends on the votes of Welfare Britain"

Daily Mail: "Labour has been accused of relying on the 'welfare vote' after the Conservatives published a provocative league table ranking Commons seats according to the number of benefit claimants.

A total of 189 constituencies in the first 200 are represented by Labour MPs, which the Tories claim explains why Ministers are failing to tackle the spiralling welfare bill.

Gordon Brown and 12 Cabinet colleagues represent seats in the top 200, while just four have a Tory MP. "

The BNP controversy

Ok I have been a bit out of it again. Sorry for that. I haven't finished some of things I was going to do yet.

I'd just like to say a few words about the BNP controversy that's taken over in the last few days since Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time. And I hope I'm not saying anything too obvious.

If anyone has seen the Question Time last Thursday, it's important to remember something that some will already know, but some won't and that Griffin himself mentioned.

And that is that a lot of people in global 'right'/Nationalist movement have effectively disowned Griffin some time ago. Although there's a rather polite article on his site today, people like David Duke and so on see Griffin as, in Griffin's own words a 'sell out' and his behavior as highly suspicious.

It's also important to remember that the history of what is sometimes termed 'fringe politics' is a history riddled with infiltration and agent provocateurs. I know Michael Collins Piper wrote a book about his own experiences called The Judas Goats, and I would like to read it sometime.

There is genuine concern about the radical direction of government that may as well have come out of the early Soviet Union. There's also genuine concern about the very basic fundamental things that make up society, the most precious institutions are being torn apart, attacked and reassembled under a new edict of social modernity aka a kind of anti-culture, a kind of anti-nationalism. Like it or not immigration, culture and race is a part of that discourse. That's nothing to do with being quote/unquote "racist".

There are genuine questions and real heart-felt disagreements people have with the way society and government has gone in many areas and the massive damage that's been inflicted. That's the reality, and it's a painful reality we've been talking about for years on here. And if people want to know why it's happened, and why would a country do that to itself ? That's because "WE", are simply not in control. There are other forces in control.

To make matters worse, everything's become mired in a culture of fanatical political correctness, where little old ladies get interrigated by the police if they don't like a gay parade, all to enforce a set of top-down cultural norms based on sickening lunacy.

So the collapse of government into a rancid quango of remote elites and political lickspittles (New Labour) dispensing extraordinary radical policies and tearing up the rule of law, while at the same time trying to hide what they are doing by giving you new 'values' of 'diversity' and 'tolerance', 'social responsibility' and so on.

And I think there real issues of what society means at all anymore or what the nation state means. And I'm sorry to say I think partly that's the idea by the government and media.

So of course any nationalist or 'ultra'-conservative party is going to gain some political momentum in that environment. And some people won't like or understand what I'm going to say here, but in principle it's not a bad thing at all. The problem I see, is that I think there's a real question mark about what exactly Nick Griffin does represent.

Nick Griffin seems to be there on the BBC getting the publicity he is because he's saying all the wrong things, not the right ones.

From supporting the atrocities in Gaza, to this focus on Islam to this rather evasive blur about what they even stand for, some of the things Griffin says are very difficult to separate from what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have said and that has to be some sort of clue at least about what's happening here.

And I can't help but be concerned that good conservatives, good nationalists are being fed a line, with a caricature Lord Haw-Haw party that's just going to take them in the wrong direction again.

There is possibly an effort to make the BNP attractive by creating a media hysteria about them.

And the idea that the BNP and Nick Griffin are controlling that is a nonsense. This is all a creation of the media. I.e not the real issues underneath are NOT a creation of the media, they are absolutely real and therefore there is strong possibility that the 'solution' being presented, could be bogus.

The Michael Jackson Story: Part 3

Sorry we are a bit behind schedule at the moment with this. And one of the reasons I wanted to write about Michael Jackson in this way was because I really didn't like what I saw written out there, in the mainstream media, the specialist music press or the alternative news which in general dropped the ball a bit with this.

Since last time, the coroner's report into Michael's death is pointing towards an overdose of the general anesthetic Propofol/Diprivan and some other drugs.

This was ruled a homicide which means prosecution can be made against someone else, in this case the focus has been on Jackson's personal physician attending to him at the time, Doctor Conrad Murray.

What's striking about Michael's death is the uncanny similarity to Elvis' death, which I'm no expert on, but I've been looking at too. Their deaths near-immediately before starting a new performance schedule. The prescription drugs, yet according to other doctors being in apparent health only shortly before their death, the focus on the personal physician, the extravagant spending and lifestyle, being the absolute top of the tree but not being in quite the same intensity of public prominence as they were previously and the general similarities of what they meant to others as stars and performers.

And from what I've seen Michael Jackson was acutely aware of what happened to others like Elvis and John Lennon, and was quite concerned about ending up in either of those situations. He was also very concerned about what happened to Princess Diana, and there's some interesting footage about that here.

The other thing of course is Michael has been laid to rest at the Forest Lawn Cemetery near Los Angeles. Obviously, it's a decision for the family, but on a purely personal note, although I understand the controversy around Neverland, I don't feel totally at home with this. And it wouldn't surprise me, if like Elvis you may hear at some point Michael is moved again.

Needless to say, Michael Jackson was one of the great figures of the 20th century, one of the great cultural pillars. In the 1980s, he was the biggest star in the world. There was Michael Jackson, and then everybody else. He was described in news reports, along with President Ronald Reagan, as possibly one of the "two most important and famous men in the world" (6:39).

Back then of course, there was no need to label himself the "King of Pop", Michael was the King of all Stars, all performers, all artists. It didn't need to be said, to say it would be immoderate. (Although it was originally Elizabeth Taylor's description, it's only when things started to move away a bit from those heights you started to hear the term "King of Pop" actually be used.)

I don't think it's possible to underestimate the influence of Michael Jackson, it is so considerable, it is a cultural fundamental and Michael Jackson has become part of the firmament and universal ether of ideas.

And very interestingly, someone slightly younger I know said they didn't fully understand this, and just were aware of the allegations and controversies until his death when some of his stuff was put on TV. You couldn't have a more stark example of the power of the media to turn everything upside down.

Like everyone I grew up with Michael Jackson, as a huge fan, but later on wasn't following his career as closely. I would hear this or that about him, about his music, his first marriage to Lisa Marie Presley, about his children, but there was a sense Michael Jackson had some difficulties knowing where to go after Thriller and Bad. Whatever he'd opened the door to in an MTV world, whatever had come out, although could never come near his status, had somewhat displaced him afterwards on the ground. Indeed Michael's former producer on Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad, Quincy Jones touches on this here.

Perhaps partly as a consequence of that, there was some insistence on more extravagant productions, more Disneyeque qualities , which I personally I think some of that, didn't always necessarily do Michael that many favours artistically, although he was the only person in the world who could actually do that work.




And really when I became particuarly aware again and started thinking again about Michael Jackson, was in 2003 when the Martin Bashir documentary (aka Living with Michael Jackson) was broadcast. And despite everything, however much a chunk of the media had turned against him, however much this was a different Michael from the days of the historic eminence of Thriller and then Bad, however much, despite his incredible success, Michael now seemed more on the outside looking in or rather back, and however uncomfortable and nervous Bashir made everybody feel, I remember at the time the scene when Bashir asks Michael to show him some dancing (5:20+), and I remember getting awakened again to the incredible sense of who Michael Jackson was.

Suddenly all the media nonsense, all the crap, as well as all of the layers of things that perhaps didn't endear some fans over the years just fell away. And I'll be honest this was a very important and moving piece of television for me personally.

And despite his fabulous wealth, despite the lavish lifestyle, it was all the more difficult to see what exactly had happened since say Bad, and why this incredible man, who was once the Star of all stars was in a documentary with Martin Bashir trying to explain himself. At the height of Michael's fame, this would have been an unthinkable nonsense.

And I think the Bashir documentary/affair is important in all this, because this is Michael trying to connect to the outside world, trying to share a bit of his universe, trying to make people understand himself instead of through the layers of media venom and he presumably thought Bashir was the person with the right credentials for this. Possibly, as Bashir did the famous 'Queen of Hearts' interview with Princess Diana back in 1995.

(The story I've heard is that Uri Geller effectively sold a meeting with Michael Jackson to Bashir for £200,000.

Again these people aren't friends, same with this Mark Lester character of course, who's ex-wife remarked recently that Lester was actually nuts and had an obsession with Jackson⁽¹⁾.)

But the documentary overall was a PR catastrophe and a depressing catalogue of mindless pointless miseries assembled by Bashir. It all came out as a disaster, and I don't think a lot of people have any idea how that can make someone feel if they are trying to connect to the wider world, but instead it just makes everything worse. It's not a nice experience to be on the end of, especially for very sensitive creative people. And then it lead to more allegations, utterly opportunistic, by, as Michael's former manager Frank DiLeo described as a 'bunch of gypsies passing through', disproved in court, but which took their their toll.

It is said Martin Bashir is a Christian, I actually see this guy as a grade A tool, and you can see how totally uncomfortable he looks throughout the documentary.


It is possible that Michael simply wasn't aware how what he was trying to communicate could be seen, seized upon and presented as, including any unusual relationships with children, a subject that has in general been made hyper-sensitive and a source of day to day paranoia by the media and government across the board anyway. And anything that's seen as a challenge to that paranoia and atmosphere is going to be a problem, and I have unease and concern about that scene in the film as I think everyone did.

But at the same time, there's no question Bashir sees Michael Jackson as a strange curiosity that belongs in a jar on a shelf somewhere with an appropriate label on it in a museum of bizarre curiosities. You wince as you watch Bashir clumsily trying to ascribe this, ascribe that from his text book of moron's crap, and the sad thing is, the really sad thing is, he thinks he's doing a great job as a journalist. Yet ironically it's Bashir who can't seem to participate in anything Michael does without looking extremely uncomfortable and trying to pathologize it.

Bashir (rewarded with a job in the US with ABC) made this film at a time when it seemed to be safe territory to make a provocative documentary about Michael Jackson, and after Michael's death recently made slithering remarks⁽²⁾ towards him about the 'greatest entertainer ever' as if he'd never made the documentary to begin with, perhaps to try to exonerate his own role in Michael's problems.

Part 4 Next....