Things to make you go ‘awwww’
I was on the Isle of Wight over the weekend and managed to get to the under-threat-of-closure Vestas wind turbine factory and take part in the protest on the Friday evening.
This is the speech given by one of the RMT reps at the protest…
You can find out all you need to know about New Labour kicking off its green revolution with standing by and watching the destruction of 600 green jobs on the Save Vestas website.
Bill Hicks died fifteen years ago today. Sent to save us, we will never know his like again…
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Like… wow. Meet the new boss, not the same as the old boss:
Barack Obama embarked on the wholesale deconstruction of George Bush’s war on terror, shutting down the CIA’s secret prison network, banning torture and rendition, and calling for a new set of rules for detainees. The repudiation of Bush’s thinking on national security yesterday also saw the appointment of a high-powered envoy to the Middle East.
[...]
“We are not, as I said during the inauguration, going to continue with the false choice between our safety and our ideals,” Obama said at the signing ceremony. “We intend to win this fight. We are going to win it on our own terms.”
[...]
As expected, Obama made good on his campaign promise to shut down Guantánamo, issuing an executive order to close the camp within a year. He also ordered a taskforce, led by the attorney general and the secretaries of defence, state and homeland security, to review the intelligence and information on each detainee and to determine whether they can be released or put on trial.
Fantastic stuff. All we need now is for Obama to open the files and reveal the level of New Labour’s collusion in all of this.
(Normal cynicism will resume shortly.)
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Barack Obama has requested the suspension of all military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, in his first major action as the new US president.
Thanks to him a generation of kids delighted in pens, paint and paper. And then their kids delighted in pens, paint and paper. And then their kids…
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Eddie Izzard: top geezer
(via Tim W)
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Another life well lived. I doubt there’s a person alive over 30 in this country who didn’t sit enthralled by one of Postgate’s creations at some time or other. Imagine touching that many lives in such an amazing way.
Here’s my favourite Bagpuss episode. The bit where the rest of the mice try to shove poor little Charlie Mouse into the bottle always makes me laugh. And Charlie had a very natty checked suit.
And I like the idea that Bagpuss had seen the world before settling down.
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George Carlin’s last interview. Man, he was great.
(Via Mike P)
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To live to see such wondrous things, eh? Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of having a monkey that would bring me a beer?
I’d given up on ever realising my dream. I had to resign myself having kids instead. It’s a poor second, I can tell you.
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So, a man releases his dead friend’s art pamphlets into the wild to be discovered by the next generation.
It only happened to me once, discovering a grumble mag in the undergrowth, that is. I must have been ten or eleven, maybe, on the way home from school. She’d kept her socks on. It was a blood-thumping, head-spinning, heat-raising experience. Just the once.
Thinking about it gives me a warm rush of nostalgia.
(In my heart, perverts. In my heart.)
(Via Jamie)
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Excellent, excellent news. If only we were as tenacious in pursuing our own war criminals.
You have to hand it to his captors. He hasn’t been easy to find, especially when he’s been spending most of his time living in the Middle Ages.
All that remains to be seen now is whether Radovan calls an old friend as a character witness…
You know, I think I just had my faith in human nature restored
The estate became home for hundreds of families escaping persecution and torture in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Uganda and Congo. Most had their request for asylum in the UK turned down, and when the Home Office began coming to the estate at 5am to remove them, Donnachie and the rest of the residents looked on in horror. “It was like watching the Gestapo – men with armour, going in to flats with battering rams. I’ve never seen people living in fear like it,” says Donnachie. “I saw a man jump from two storeys up when they came for him and his family. I stood there and I cried, and I said to myself, ‘I am not going to stand by and watch this happen again.’”
She got together with her friend Noreen and organised the residents into daily dawn patrols, looking out for immigration vans. When the vans arrived, a phone system would swing in to action, warning asylum seekers to escape.
The whole estate pitched in, gathering in large crowds in the early-morning dark to jeer at immigration officials as they entered the tower blocks. On more than one occasion, the vans left the estate empty – the people they had come for had got out in time and were hidden by the crowd. The estate kept this up for two years until forced removals stopped.
But what happened on the Kingsway is not unique. Over the past few years there has been a growing resistance to the government’s attempts to deport failed asylum seekers. From Manchester, from Sheffield, from Belfast, from Bristol, the Home Office is being bombarded with requests from British people all over the country asking for asylum seekers to be given another chance.
(via Jamie)
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Bill Hicks died fourteen years ago today.
This was one of the very first routines of his I heard and I knew I was in love:
The uninitiated should start at the top of this list. He’s still still topical, still relevant and still needed.
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