Back from the travels - very nice, thanks, apart from the Little Englander wankers cluttering up the place. More of them later, possibly.

Have, however, returned to chaos: family illness, financial armageddon and about a kerjillion emails (I really must unsubscribe from the insanely, worryingly prolific Reuter’s Carnage Alerts some time). If anyone’s emailed me, hold hard - I will get back to you eventually.

Plus - a comedy classic this - Gary the guinea pig turned up his toes while in the care of friends. We hardly knew him. Haven’t broken it to the kids yet - any past experience on this would be gratefully received. A memorial service is being held in his honour tomorrow. No flowers by request.

And remote blogging via Twitter. What was all that about? Bollocks, that’s what. Twitter, in short, is bobbins. I swear to God that contrary to appearances most of the posts were not made while I was drunk. Never again, on my oath.

(Twitter, that is, not drinking. Obviously).

My six year-old daughter’s just been complaining that whenever I make up her lunch box for school, I ‘always’ make her jam sandwiches. This is a filthy lie clearly aimed at undermining my position as most popular member of the household.

Only when I have a particularly stinking hangover - and can’t face lingering over the preparation of food - does she get jam sandwiches and that’s happened about once in the last month. But she obviously only remembers the disappointment of the less exotic sandwich over the glee of a more exciting comestible.

And so, as you do, I got me thinking about the Prime Minister’s legacy. Has it all been endless jam butties? Sure, we’ve had the egg mayonnaise of Northern Ireland but what about the Quorn and cream cheese of Iraq? The rest is jam, isn’t it? Jam yesterday, jam today and jam tomorrow.

There’s a breakdancer coming into my daughter’s school tomorrow to strut his stuff. Naturally, YouTube was the first port of call to show her what it’s all about. Just had to share.

This guy is a freak, obviously.

And this guy’s brains were obviously coating the walls of his skull once he’d finished.

Update: Aw! Look at him go!

It’s Hutton’s Chase Me’s birthday:

Been doing this nonsense for three years now, and where’s it got me? Nowhere. It has simply widened the circle of people who think I’m a dick. That’s all it has achieved.

And isn’t that, in a final analysis, what it’s all about? Nobody called me a ‘cretin’ or ‘filth’ or ‘you cunt’ before I was a blogger.

Yay, blogging!

I bought a straw cowboy hat on Brighton beach today. It’s made me inordinately happier than five years - on and off - of blogging ever did.

I see Oliver Kamm is once again defecating on the medium through which he made his modest reputation as a writer.

The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate. It is a fact of civic life that is changing how politics is conducted - overwhelmingly for the worse, and with no one accountable for the decline.

The ‘Oliver Kamm is the author of Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy. His blog is at…’ sign-off was my favourite bit. Blogging is bobbins, please look at my blog.

Ah, I remember Oliver when he merely used to get stroppy about the difference between a ‘faction’ and a ‘fraction’ (as in the ‘Red Army…’). ‘The stupidest blogger alive,’ was how he described Ryan of Beatnik Salad over the affair, not poisoning the debate at all. Happy days.

I met Kamm once. It was at the lunch where the bloggers who were christened ‘the new commentariat‘ by the Guardian were summoned. (I was invited, inexplicably, all other bloggers in the country seemingly too busy being civil to each other and engaging in intelligent debate). Oliver turned up late and immediately launched into another tedious and protracted diatribe against Noam Chomsky. The starters were therefore cold so Tim Ireland and I finished all the wine between us. True story.

I believe Oliver lives near me although I’ve never bumped into him. Since that day I’ve kept an eye out for him so I can mess up his hair, push him into a patch of nettles or roll him in dog muck in the park.

My beloved The Friday Thing was put to sleep today. It is no more. It’s proved impossible to run in any viable manner and so the decision was made to close it.

This makes me inordinately sad and not just because I’ve been one of its writers for the last year. I feel genuinely bereft. I was a devoted reader from almost the beginning and will miss very much its freewheeling wit, cynicism and imagination.

If you’ve never read it I suggest you get across there and have a swim in the archives. I defy anyone not to get something out of TFT’s five years of consistent brilliance.

Self-referential and out of context as they may be, I’m reproducing my final TFT pieces on Chicken Yoghurt to complete the set and to prove that ‘I did that’. (You can read the rest of the stuff I wrote for it here.)

I’m very proud to have been asked to write for TFT. It’s been a personal highpoint for me and I think I’ll go along way before I feel the same pleasure and satisfaction again. I worked hard at trying to match the quality of the writing that had made me such a fan of it. I hope I came close on the odd occasion.

It’s melodramatic, I know, but a bit more fun went out of the world today. Cheer me up, somebody?

Bored and following this post from Chris, I’ve discovered the wonders of Twitter. It’s blogging via your mobile phone as far as I’m concerned.

You send up to 140 characters via text message to a given number and it appears on your Twitter page. Something to keep me amused for a bit.

Those who wish to can receive a Twitterer’s posts via their mobiles or Instant Messenger. A little jiggery pokery lets you post your ‘tweets’ on your blog as well - see in the sidebar on the right under ‘out and about’.

I think I might liveblog my trip to the pub tonight. Bet you can’t wait.

…shock and awe started this time four years ago?

Tim Ireland wants to know what bloggers were saying for themselves on March 20 2003.

I was blogging at ‘Bar Room Philosophy’ at the time, a blog I kicked off in January 2002. The blog is now long gone but thanks to the wonders of the interweb, the post I wrote on March 19 2003 was preserved by the Wayback Machine.

The post I made on March 28 was better, after having been on Brighton beach watching the West Pier burn down.

I was a proper Stopper back then. My marching days didn’t last very long though. Trying to get away from combat-booted policemen, breaking up a march for having the temerity to deviate from its route, while pushing a two year-old in a buggy made a coward of me, I’m sorry to say. And then seeing George Galloway speak in the flesh put me off the Stop The War Coalition altogether.

I was very fond of BRP and I’m sorry I closed it. Through it I became friendly with a few people who I still know now, including Tim. Some of them are still blogging and I’ll tag a few of them (Jim, Nick and Rochenko) to carry on this meme, if they don’t mind. I think this is rather a good one.

So, what did you post on 20 March, 2003? (Or on as near to the day as possible.)

• Jim Bliss
• Rochenko
• Nick Barlow
• Daniel Davies
• Backword Dave

Doesn’t have to be a blog entry; it could easily be in usenet or in a forum.

Update: Rochenko reminisces.

On Saturday last week, a Guardian article from 1986 was circulated amongst a group of bloggers which related to what Paul Staines, AKA Guido Fawkes, may or may not have got up to whilst a right-wing political activist at Hull University.

Being something of a night-owl, Sunny Hundal at Pickled Politics beat the rest of us to the punch and published the article. Early Sunday morning, Tim Ireland, Labour MP Tom Watson and I followed suit.

Shortly after, emails arrived from Paul Staines stating that he considered the publication of the article as defamatory. He demanded its removal from our blogs, stating he had a ‘retraction’ of the article which he would let us see. In a show of good faith, I removed the article from Chicken Yoghurt, as did the others from their blogs.

Paul Staines posted on his blog saying that the post that had appeared on Tom Watson’s blog (and only Tom Watson’s blog) was now gone and bragging that legal notices had been issued. You can no longer read that post because the next day (Monday), it was deleted. You’ll have to draw your own conclusion as to why he might do that.

I have now seen the ‘retraction’ that Paul Staines referred to. I am unfortunately not permitted to publish it. I am not allowed to print the ‘bane’ of the original 1986 article, nor am I allowed to print the ‘antidote’, a personal letter - written four years later - from the journalist who wrote the article, which Staines claims exonerates him. Read that again. The Guardian newspaper did not retract the article. That is why it is still available in the Lexis-Nexis database.

I will leave others to draw conclusions as to the behaviour of a person whose own blog is registered off-shore (in Nevis) in an attempt to avoid British libel laws.

Guido has a mini-corporation behind him, Global & General Nominees LLC of Nevis. If you want to sue the publishers go ahead, the office for service is properly registered in accordance with the law. The laws of the island require that the plaintiff first deposits US$25,000 with the court before commencing action. Guido will defend himself vigorously.

Or the behaviour of a self-confessed libertarian drawing on the power of the state when threatened. Or the behaviour of a gossip-peddler happy to smear with innuendo and the help of anonymous commenters on his blog. Or the behaviour of a person who claims to have evidence exonerating him from allegations but refusing to allow that evidence to be published. Or why he chose to ’serve notice’ on four bloggers and not the Guardian.

At the end of the day, this boils down to money. The libel laws in the UK are a plaything of the monied - you can’t get legal aid to fight a libel action. It’s often said that ‘it’s not libel if it’s true’. That is incorrect. It is, actually, ‘it’s not libel if it’s provable‘. To fight my case would take more resources than I have.

I will take this opportunity to say that, since his attempt to claim some credit in the outing of Mark Oaten last year, I have regarded Paul Staines AKA Guido Fawkes as little more than scum. That he is held as some exemplar of blogging by those who should know better has always struck me as a sick joke. This is not a matter of ‘ideological differences’ or a ‘Brownite-plot’ (you have to laugh) as the witless have tried to make out. This is pest control motivated by disgust.

This blog is now taking a break. I don’t know how long that break will be but hopefully it won’t be a permanent one. I’ll continue to publish my The Friday Thing columns here for those who are interested. They’re my best stuff anyway. I’m also honoured to have been asked to play a small role in the launch of National Service.

Comments on this post are closed.

Update 15/2: Paul Staines emails…

Lexis Nexis’ legal department confirmed this morning that the defamatory article is being removed from their archive immediately.

Sending the email with a footer exhorting the recipient to ‘Whisper Vicious Rumours’ and ‘Leak Secret Documents’ was the classy part.

Update 15/2 @ 7.30PM: For those seeking further information and context, I would urge you to read this from Sunny and follow his links.

If you’re not a fan of hot blogger-on-blogger action then you’re probably best advised to move on. There’s some jokes I wrote for The Friday Thing further down the page. Some of them I was quite pleased with. This is probably my last word on this subject, so let’s get on with it.

Not long after the piece I wrote for Martin Bright’s blog was published on Wednesday, I received an email from Iain Dale refuting what I had said about him in the piece. I took the time to write what i thought was a considered and polite reply outlining the facts as I saw them and making some observations about Iain’s behaviour over the last week or so. Since then, I’ve heard nothing. No acknowledgement, no ’sorry’, not even a ‘get stuffed’.

Iain asked that I keep his email confidential. He didn’t, however, ask that I keep my reply confidential. So I’m reproducing it here - I’ve kept to the letter of Iain’s request if not the spirit. One show of bad faith deserves another.

(more…)

Right here. Happy New Year as well, I suppose.

Normal service will be resumed at some point, including another bloody meme being put to the sword. The lurgie given to me for Christmas by my parents has mutated into a delightful ear infection that has left me temporarily stone deaf in one ear. Apart from the screaming tinnitus which is making me want to kill somebody, obviously.

I’ve got a shiny new iPod on the way from Amazon and only one ear with which to listen to it. And I haven’t had a drink for a week. Something has got to give and soon.

In my absence, I’ll leave you with John Prescott being interviewed on Radio 4 this morning (RealPlayer required). Anybody who’s read more than one post round here will probably know that appeals to my patriotism and sense of national pride are likely to fall on, currently, one deaf and one scornful ear.

That said, if you can listen to that interview without burning with shame at the thought that this man is currently running the country, you’re a more charitable person than me. One can only presume that the Chuckle Brothers were busy.

Later.

Update: Mark Steel says it all for me.

Davide, the great big bastard, has passed on the ‘What are the seven best things you did this past year?’ meme. It’s spreading faster than the clap at the Sun’s Christmas party.

Anyway, it’s going to be difficult to do this without sounding horribly smug and self-congratulatory so I might as well just get on with it. In no particular order…

• Getting asked to write for these guys. Like having Jim fix something for me.
• Getting asked to curate this.
• Getting an apology from former Tory leader Michael Howard. (He bumped into me with his bag at Victoria tube station.)
• Teaching my two kids to sing ‘French Foreign Legion‘ by Frank Sinatra by the simple expedient of subjecting them to it at every opportune moment. Now, a truncated troop of Von Trapps, we entertain ourselves by sweetly braying the crooning monster’s finest moment. (obligatory ‘I love my family’ entry)
• Oh, I don’t know. I found a forgotten fiver in a jacket pocket.
• Breaking the bank at Monte Carlo.
• Helping to kill this meme by not passing it on.

Update: I’m offering a new service: Meme Killer. If you have any annoying memes which you feel obliged to pass on but in fact hate, send them here and I will drown them like superfluous kittens.

Update update: Nosemonkey also nominated me. He’s an even bigger bastard. He insists I come up with another seven. Here goes.

• Having a go on Nosemonkey’s mother. Seven times.

The book, spotted in Borders in Brighton:

Sorry if you’re bored of of my going on about the book but I warn you I may still be hammering on about it for some time yet. When your first book comes out I guarantee you’ll also be this giddy/sad.

I did a little rooting around in the 18 Doughty Street archives and found the Vox Politics show that I appeared on this week.

Watch me here (windows media) in all my fat glory. The lager and sausage roll diet is clearly not working.

So anyway. A few months ago the good people at Friday Books asked me to curate an anthology of some of the best of this year’s British blogging - much like Tim Worstall’s excellent 2005:Blogged.

Well, it’s nearly here - The Blog Digest 2007. It goes on sale on this Friday, December 1. You can get it online at Amazon, Politico’s, Waterstones, and in all good books shops. It features a hundred(ish) posts from some of the UK’s best bloggers (and me) and a cover and cartoons by the estimable Matt Buck (The cartoon that heralds the chapter on sex is truly something to behold.) I’ve had my copies back from the printers and it’s looking really rather ace, if I do say so myself.

The book is in themed chapters this year (unlike Tim’s which was ordered chronologically) - Culture & Media, Sex, War, Politics, Activism, Work & Play, Death and Sport. I’ve tried to create a broad collection so, as well as some of my favourite blogs, there are quite a few excellent ones in there that I hadn’t read before researching the book. I can’t remember just how many blogs I looked through but it was loads and loads.

Hopefully, it’s a rounded collection if not a particularly balanced (politically, at least) one. Strange as it sounds for a collection of other people’s work but I hope it reflects my own personality to some extent. There’s outrage and anger and my sense of humour - many of the pieces are in they because they made me laugh out loud - in there.

I tried also to make the book as accessible as possible for people with little or no knowledge of blogs (maybe someone will buy Matthew Taylor a copy). Hopefully it showcases some of the fantastic writing that you can find out there.

Any plugging of the book would be gratefully accepted. Obviously I stand (hopefully) to make some money out its sales but it’s also a shop window for some real talent that deserves wider exposure. (Advertising the book on your blog via an Amazon Associates account might be worthwhile - an ad for Tim’s 2005:Blogged bought me a couple of DVDs this year.)

Thanks to everybody who made this possible - the Friday Books gang and, of course, all the contributors who gave permission for their work to be included.

Needless to say I’m very excited. I shall of course be hanging round all the bookshops in Brighton saying ‘Oh, this looks excellent, I think I’ll buy ten copies’ in a loud voice. If anybody spots the book in the wild or sees any reviews please let me know.

Update: As of ten days ago, David Blunkett had only shifted 1,000 copies of his memoirs. For Christ’s sake, at the very least, please help me do better than that. If/when the Blog Digest reaches 1,000 sales, I’ll let everybody know and we can have a good old laugh. So, buy the Blog Digest and help rub David Blunkett’s nose in it.

Update update: Anybody tempted to buy the book from Amazon but put off by the message ‘Availability: Usually dispatched within 4 to 6 weeks’ should ignore it - Davide received his copy from them in 24 hours.

A few months ago, I found myself within spitting distance of Christopher Hitchens after attending a lecture by him on Thomas Paine. Having, however, now read this review utterly destroying Hitchens’ book about Paine (via Dave), I’m now regretting that I resisted, as crude as this sounds, the urge to spit.

As graceless and liverish as Hitchens was in the question and answer session after the lecture, and as unnecessarily foul-mouthed as he was at the later book signing, at least, or so I thought, his lecture on Paine was worth the entrance fee. Except, now having read the review, I realise that not a word that Hitchens uttered about Paine that night is to be trusted.

At the book signing I bought a copy of Hitchens’ ‘Orwell’s Victory‘, Orwell being a hero of mine (in so far as a 35 year-old man can have heroes, Han Solo notwithstanding), and had him sign it in a pointless attempt to secure a sod of common ground between me and a man I regarded as almost, but not quite, a complete tit.

The spine of the book is as yet unbroken. If Hitchens is half as inaccurate about Orwell as he is about Paine, the book is worthless. Ebay beckons. Any offers?

Started by Iain Dale and spreading like a particularly virulent strain of crabs, the ‘ten things I would never do’ meme has been passed on to me via Not Saussure, the swine.

So, here goes…

10. Say never again.

9. Watch ‘Never Say Never Again‘ again.

8. Smile at a crocodile.

7. Trust a hippie.

6. Mind the bollocks.

5. Rain in Southern California

4. Can say goodbye, no no no no no no no.

3. Promise you a rose garden.

2. Give a sucker an even break.

1. Pass this meme on to ten others.

I’m a big fan of small acts of unsolicited kindness to and from strangers. I like good manners and, being an old fashioned sort, I also enjoy chivalry and not just because I fancy having a natty suit of armour and a warcharger. In short, I despise beastliness.

So, being of good breeding and while dropping my daughter off at school the other day, I held the gate open for one of the mothers. I didn’t catch a thank you from her which isn’t unusual - 90% of the parents with children at the school are pig ignorant after all.

What was different, however, is that the mother was wearing the niqab. And do you know, like Jack Straw, I realised that the garment can be a barrier to communication; the mother may well have smiled gratefully and said an unostentatious ‘thank you’, both niceties being disguised by the niqab.

Where Jack, a man with evidently such thin skin and delicate sensibilities that it remains a wonder how he ever summoned the courage to shake the hand of Robert Mugabe or flog weapons across the globe, evidently frets about this kind of thing, on further consideration I realised there is in fact an upside. Whereas I would have mentally added a non-niqab wearing parent displaying such behaviour to my list of enemies, on this occasion I didn’t.

The mother may have said thank you, she may not have. That being the case, I’d like to posit a new theory based on the famous thought experiment, Schrödinger’s cat.

I know for a fact that 90% of the non-niqab wearing parents in the schoolyard, knowing neither the cost nor value of civility (low and high, respectively), are ill-bred boors deserving of a size nine up the backside and capable of spoiling my mood. Under the terms of McKeating’s Niqab, however, just as the physicist’s feline was simultaneously both alive and dead, so a niqab-wearing mother is both polite and friendly and rude and stand offish. Or, for those readers of lower intelligence, much like a box that could be holding either £50,000 or one penny.

In this state of uncertainty, I am neither able to condemn the mother along with the rest nor gather her to my bosom as I have those showing themselves worthy of my esteem. My mood is neither spoiled nor elevated and a sense of benign ambivalence is maintained until further evidence is presented. A synthesis - a Third Way, if you will - is reached, while achieving a state of being that is quintessentially British.

What could be more modern than that? The conclusion that this new theory arrives at is surely, in Britain today, we should decide to refuse The Banker’s* offer.

*Popular rhyming slang.

This week’s New Statesman just arrived in the post. I’m not a fan if I’m honest.

It’s like Guido Fawkes’ blog - there’s rarely anything worth reading but I feel compelled to keep going back just in case I miss something. I doubt I’m the only one. You can pretty much absorb the average issue’s gist over the course of a fairly relaxed tom tit. I wouldn’t bother with it but the current subscription deal offers 12 issues at just 40p each and a free book.

Being of puerile mind the only thing to immediately leap at me from the Stateman’s pages this week is this picture - accompanying his ‘it’s got to be Gordon’ interview - of boy wonder, David Miliband flicking the Vs:

I wonder if whoever laid out the issue is having a laugh because if you turn back a page in the direction of David’s V-flickage, you find this:

One for the Kremlinologists, that one. (Also, who does Miliband’s hair? It looks like it’s been chewed.) And then there was the Statesman’s website earlier this morning:

On first glance you think, ‘Bloody hell, Miliband’s let himself go’. Kim Jong-mil.

Not great political insights, I’ll grant you but I’ve got a hangover right now that would have made Oliver Reed weep.

And then there were eight.

Picked the wrong summer holiday to build one of these with the kids. It was out of date before we even hung it up.

As if butchering Tom and Jerry wasn’t enough. All those childhood years spent poring over books about the solar system. And for what? Bloody progress.

It’s been a bad week for those of us with arrested development. Next they’ll telling us that the Jim’ll Fix It footage of those cub scouts who ate their lunch on the roller coaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach was faked.

That 2003 UB313 can sod right off as well.

At MyHeritage you can upload a picture of yourself and their database compares you with 4,000 celebrities.

Let’s see…

A Butler, a Bratpacker, a Beatle, two Bonds, a Bogshed fan, a Bolshevik and a Baywatch babe (how the hell? I do have her chest I suppose. Time to pack the beer in. Again.)

Bloody hell, though, not bad. At least Charles Clarke didn’t figure in the mix.

I’m not sure what kind of degenerative eye disorder you’d have to be suffering from to mistake me for any of them, though.

If the ID card facial recognition software works like this we’re in for some hilarity at the airports in a year or two.

(via Gary Marshall)

Nosemonkey’s tagged me with another tiresome meme. How I hate him and it. I’m to list my five favourite ‘social media‘ sites. I hate that term as well, it’s got a loathsome dreamed-up-in-Hoxton/New Labour twattishness about it. Considering I’m one of the least social people to draw breath and regard most of this social media crap (instant messaging, for example) as replacement-for-proper-interaction bobbins that office workers use to distract them from the fact they hate their jobs and themselves, I seem a poor choice for this particular waste of time.

It also gives them the opportunity to cultivate invisible friends who’ll they’ll ditch after the novelty of LOL, ROFL, IIRC and rest of the self-satisfied and exclusionary sub-culture of ‘clever’ slang they use for language wears off. People should try and remember they’re not characters in A Clockwork Orange or protecting the secret of the location of the D-Day landings. Bastards.

Anyway. Five social media sites? Well, I’ll give it a go…

(more…)

My partner is a sign language interpreter. She’s up at WOMAD in Reading today intepreting some of the workshops and shows for Deaf people.

She’s just phoned to say she watched the mighty, mighty Mark Thomas‘ act in the comedy tent and had a chat with him afterwards. He’s a very, very nice person apparently and his act was fantastic. ‘Did you get a photo?’ ‘No.’

The signed copy of his new book and the promise to visit Chicken Yoghurt that she procured from him are scant recompense.

A spot of idle blog-hopping this afternoon took me to Merrick’s drum, where I found a quote from the ace Julian Cope which I’m taken with:

Sure, your robot self can get you through the day, but be careful - or the person in you who does the dishes or drives on automatic pilot may easily become the same one who brings up the children. And then where would we be? Touched by absolutely nothing at all. So when you watch the News at 10 and the dead bodies are just a drag… be afraid, be very afraid.

Anyway. As you were.

It’s seems to be one of blogging’s unwritten rules (now, of course, written) that to declare that blogging will be light on one’s blog due to lack of inspiration, writer’s block or some other malaise or ennui means that one is then immediately deluged with inspiration and masses of material to write about. Here’s hoping.

I can’t even be bothered to moan about Tony Blair’s latest speech in which he outlined his new, disturbing Mystic Meg doctrine for international affairs:

[W]e have to act not react; we have to do so on the basis of prediction not certainty…

How the predictions will be made, Blair didn’t say. He could try the I-Ching as espoused in Philip K Dick’s “oh-shit-I’m-trapped-in-the-wrong-reality” tale, The Man in the High Castle. He certainly sounds increasingly divorced from reality, talking about chucking his weight about on the basis of guesswork, however well informed.

Anyway. This post is the blogging equivalent of going for one of my lucky wees when watching a football match: something always happens when I’m away from the action.

Back soon.