News of the World Hacked to Death

The final issue of News of the World, in a surprising display of humour they covered it with some of the more dubious and exploitative headlines the newspaper has run in the past.

By Elliot Adams

I was going to wait until after reading the News of the World‘s final issue before weighing in on the latest batch of News International’s wrong-doing, very bravely taking shots at the things everyone else already hates. But even without the normal parade of witch-hunts, libel and outing of people’s sex lives the ‘Screws of the World has become famous for – it is junk food news, cheap to produce but devoid of any real content; I just can’t bring myself to do it.

The way NI have been addressing the situation has been reprehensible, and it is this that I want to now gripe on about. Putting aside for a moment allegations about the bribing of police officers and hacking into the private communications of union leaders, victims of terrorist bombings, fallen soldiers and murdered schoolgirls(in one instance leading her parents to believe she was still alive). Admittedly this is a fairly large aside, a fast stream of feculent ordure that threatens to choke News International, and the police, the Prime Minister and the self-regulated free press along with them – it is not called the gutter press for nothing.

There’s been a fervour to the hyperbolic coverage from the NotW‘s contemporaries; some bemoaned ‘The End of the World’ and its passage to the gallows, perhaps feeling that the mob could call for their own sacrifice in time. Others were shouting down the foul recreant with revolutionary zeal, a link Henry Porter made explicit in The Observer:

A lightning revolt with a whiff of the Arab Spring about it … a feeling of liberation at the end of this highly charged week and we can say that our society seems better off: our political system is freer and, I would suggest, a little bit cleaner; relations between the media, politicians and the public have changed for good.

While I agree that politicians have been given a scare with regards to how they cosy up to figures like Murdoch, the current situation is more akin to the Terror in Revolutionary France; conspiracies(both real and imagined) are rife and heads are rolling, but all the wrong ones. (Alongside Clive Goodman)David Cameron’s former director of communications Andy Coulson has been fired, arrested and fired again – but so far he is an exception. Though it has rapidly become apparent that the ‘one rouge reporter’ defence was about as silly as it sounded, executives, managers and editors calling the shots have remained safe while hacks, photographers and office workers at the NotW are put out of work. It seems they are being sacrificed on behalf of a what James Murdoch freely admits was as failure of NI corporate governance.

Murdoch's continued protection of Brooks may be due to dynastic concerns, reputedly his wife and daughter are not fond of her, but she is integral to James Murdoch's work - to turn on her might cause in-fighting.(Image: World Economic Forum)

In a structure based heavily on top-down authority it makes no sense for accountability to stop on the ground floor. Even with those who indulged in phone-hacking, you can’t expect a tabloid hack to have the self-awareness to critique the editorial guidance of his corporate overlords, these are pitiful creatures that think ‘ethics’ is a county just north of London. If they were not so blessed with the complete absence of self-awareness the job’s suicide rate would be atrocious, every day the clattering of keyboards would be punctuated by the sad thud of heads on desks as the pentobarbital takes effect, while James Murdoch whirrs past in a street sweeper keeping the aisles clear of corpses.

Maybe I am being too quick to judge though, Rebekah Brooks claims it is “inconceivable that [she] knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling [actions]allegations” well there you have it, literally incon-fucking-ceivable. There is no way anyone could conceive of a bizarro world where the head of a major newspaper would have any awareness of what was being published in said newspaper or where those stories had come from. Clearly those at the helm of NotW are the victims of some kind of cruel prank where they’ve been tricked into thinking that they were running a newspaper, are they entitled to compensation perhaps?

Likewise Brooks and Coulson are misunderstood on the allegation that they bribed the police for information. Now admittedly they did both inadvertently confess to this in front of a Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee hearing. But when asked if they would do so again Coulson was very clear;

We operate within the code and within the law and if there is a clear public interest then we will.

That’s reassuring, ‘within the law’. Clearly not the law we’ve had for centuries about not making payment to a police officer acting within his duty, but another law – perhaps the one outlawing wearing a suit of armour in the Houses of Parliament. So really News International is a paragon of truth and virtue.

The spontaneous closure of the News of the World was  seen by many as a virtuous move, doing the right thing by falling on their sword, but the cynic in me finds this unlikely. Last week, News Corporation posted a press release announcing a new “managing editor structure” at its newspapers in a move towards integration of daily and Sunday publications. To this end, a group managing editor position was created with responsibility over both The Sun and News of the World and News of the World‘s managing editor Bill Akass was to be moved to a safe regulatory executive position.

We will take a comprehensive look at where there is common ground across our titles and where we should remain unique. Where there is common ground we will find ways of implementing efficiencies to editorial systems and processes and, where appropriate, we will find ways of introducing seven day working.

Clearly News Corporation were already planning on merging their daily and Sunday titles, is it really a stretch to see this as evidence that the death of NotW was also planned before all this kicked off anyway?

I disagree with the notion that NotW was a toxic influence that had to be killed off before it tainted Murdoch’s fitness to takeover BskyB, there’s plenty evidence that another of NI’s rags the Sun is also tainted by the phone-hacking scandal. Even if there wasn’t, the Sun is currently waiting to hear if they’ll be prosecuted for breaching contempt of court laws in their reporting of Joanna Yeates’ murder – so hardly a ‘clean’ example of NI’s responsibility. NotW‘s closure was merely expedient.

Some have speculated that the plan has long been to replace NotW with a superficially different Sun on Sunday title. I would not be surprised if this is the case, nor would I be particularly shocked if the News of the World made a comeback in a familiar form in a couple of years time. The simple fact of the matter is that Murdoch has a metric fuckton of money and influence enough to have king-making powers in UK politics. Unless the government curbs his influence, this is not going to change any time soon. To some in the media, the 7th of July may have been “a lightning revolt” reminiscent of the Arab spring, for some politicians it was the day they re-evaluated their relations with the media, but Murdoch is media-concentration incarnate, to him it was just Thursday.

Politician Bites Watchdog

Ed Miliband seems to understand the situation a lot better than Cameron. Gone is the simpering replicant who somehow got stuck in a loop during an interview 9 days ago, he hasn’t gone to war with Murdoch, but he has been uncompromising in seeking an independent solution to the mess his company has left in it’s wake.

Apparently ignoring the rumoured threats of a lifetime cut-off of support for labour policy from News Corp titles, Miliband has passionately pushed for Brook’s resignation and a delay or cancellation for Murdoch’s BskyB bid until an criminal investigation is complete or it is deferred to the competition commission – threatening to force the issue to a vote if necessary.

This is not necessarily to his credit though, he has less to lose because Cameron’s courtship of Murdoch was far more successful than his. Team Cameron has spent years getting News International to play for them, the linking of interests between the Conservative Party and NI was the product of endless negotiating, secretive dinner meetings, promises to abolish Ofcom and scale back the BBC, and quaffing wine in exotic villas. Ultimately I think the clincher was the link Cameron trusted route to Murdoch through Brooks via her disgraced – and newly employed by the Tories – friend Andy Coulson. Ever since Murdoch’s papers have served the interests of the Conservative party, even supporting the Scottish Nationalist Party who provide a softer resistance to Tory policies north of the border.

Miliband beat Cameron to the punch in seeking reform of the PCC, but to abolish and replace it at this time would be a mistake.(Image: DECC)

Miliband’s has had no chance at wooing Murdoch, whereas David Cameron couldn’t be more ‘in’ with News International right now unless Murdoch buried his gentleman’s region testes-deep inside him, which would be about as uncomfortable for Cameron as he appears to be now anyway. Dave is tethered to NI and so has been flopping about defending Andy Coulson while condemning his actions, spitting soundbites criticising vague notions of something wrong in the UK media while constantly on running from talking about his own involvement with problematic media figures – he is loud and showboating but directionless, a rodeo clown afraid of his own Bull.

Hence Cameron’s distraction tactic of attacking the Press Complaints Commission. It is true that the PCC’s initial response to phone-hacking in 2009 was insubstantial and not enough attention was given to the evidence revealed by The Guardian, but it has since become obvious that they were intentionally misled and  the PCC have withdrawn their report from that time. Hindsight is always 20/20, but prior to this past few weeks even the police thought the matter was confined to a small number of celebrities. If the police and James Murdoch himself both could not accurately assess the scale of the problem with their greater access to evidence, how then can Cameron claim that the self-regulation apparatus of the PCC should have done?

Those calling for stronger regulation than the PCC can provide seem to be forgetting that these acts were against the law, there have been arrests and those responsible may face prison sentences – is illegality and the full force of law not ample regulation?

It seems to me like there is a drive building off Cameron’s statements for MPs to castigate journalism as a whole for recent events. I find it difficult to listen to MPs pontificating on the failings of the press without ever acknowledging New Labour’s part in the cementing Murdoch’s power or these Thatcherite-lite conservatives courting that same power.

The PCC has its failings and we have long needed a way to address the concentration of media ownership. But it should be remembered that it was a journalist applying all the bounds of good practice who exposed these latest scandals. The PCC has helped resolve a constant supply of complaints at no cost, free speech and good practice are protected by independent self-regulation, but are also fostered by it. Nick Davies and other ‘Guardian journalists have been exemplar in applying a meticulously accurate scrutiny to the News of the World. This very process has been a shining example of media plurality prevailing over media concentration and of the industry regulating itself independent of government control.

DoucheMoveWatch: Daily Mail Exploits Child’s Death to Berate Teachers

By DAILY MAIL REVILER

Today’s Daily Mail was the normal mix of sensationalism, scaremongering, racism, pseudo-science and anti-reason(their idiocy surpasses common nonsense to such a degree that it annihilates reason whenever the two collide). But The ‘Mail has now seemingly given up all pretence of being a newspaper, not a comicbook, by headlining a report on a car-bombing in Thailand and the rising death-toll from such occurrences with “Ka-boom! …”. They swiftly followed this up with one of the most appalling and malign pieces I have ever had the misfortune to read. They have opted to exploit the sad story of Sophie Howard, a 13-year-old killed by a falling tree branch in Yaxley on Thursday, to spread more of their unthinking anti-union bile.

I've been in the pub since taking this screenshot and The Daily Mail has since adjusted the headline and some of the article content to hide their vindictive implication.

This was  an apparently unpredictable accident, Sophie Howard hit by a falling branch as she sat on a park bench in Peterborough. But the ‘Mail clearly blames her teachers for being on strike, and therefore allowing Sophie and her friends time for their fatal trip to the park. The Mirror and The Telegraph took the same ridiculous angle on the story, but with a great deal more subtlety.

It even seems unlikely to me that anyone prior to the ‘Mail itself was making this absurd connection between events, though obviously, as is typical with this auspicious publication, the article is peppered with conveniently anonymous vox pop quotations reiterating the anonymous journalist’s position. “The fact is if the teachers were not on strike Sophie would have been at school and this would not have happened,” one anonymous source says, completely unprompted of course.

Now, perhaps this is my problem, but I seem entirely unable to find that dubious twitter quote from Mrs “one angry parent” claiming “she should have been safe at school … it could have been my daughter” – perhaps twitter’s search function is broken. Admittedly though, other people have made similar posts following The Daily Mail‘s trash – so if they can’t be honest, at least they’re sometimes prescient(“even stopped clocks”).

If the teachers were not on strike Sophie would have been at school and this would not have happened

Another anonymous source points the finger at local government – yet another constant enemy of the ‘Mail - for ignoring his warnings of the dangerous trees. I wonder if anyone in the ‘Mail’s newsroom recalls the Daily Mail‘s claims that council efforts to maintain or replace dangerous trees were health-and-safety-’gorn-mad caused by “misguided fears” of deadfall accidents. Accidents which the, ever forgetful,  Daily Mail have themselves pointed out do happen even in the presence of teachers.

No matter how much of a technically inept Kelvin MacKenzie job this piece was, the crux of its post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacious argument is that; though this accident could have happened at any time, it didn’t, it happened during strikes. Well I too, indirectly , think this is the important issue here. Though the accident could have happened at any time, it happened less than a day ago. There is a family and a school that has just lost a child in a tragic accident, so recently that there is no guarantee that those the ‘Mail accuses know of the death yet. Yet instead of covering the accident in a decent and sensitive manner, this vacuous thought-hole of a newspaper has been peddling that butterfly-flaps-its-wings-and-causes-a-hurricane crap to groundlessly accuse those who knew and taught Sophie Howard on a daily basis of being responsible for her death. They are the soul cancer that is going to finish us all.

If there is anyone at the Daily Mail who still remembers what it was like to be a human being then they will be apologising to both the Howard family and the teaching staff from her school. Failing that, shutting the hell up for a bit and taking a long hard look at the mindless screeching terrorhawk you have become would be a start.

Update: Ending on a song because why not.

Witnessing and Exploitation in Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields

Tamil protests in Canada which has the largest Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora population. (Image: 松林 Ｌ)

by Elliot Adams

Many broadcasters are using the summer evening slow hours to drop some emotion bait for the September-November documentary award-season. Long-running documentary series are wheeling out their larger set-pieces for this year, as This World did with their excellent ‘The Invasion of Lampedusa’. There have also been suitably emotional and shocking standalone efforts, like Terry Pratchett ‘s insightful video essay on assisted suicide, Choosing to Die, or More4′s The Pipe. But the most controversial so far has been Channel4′s documentary Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, which I finally managed to catch a last night and is still available internationally online.

It contains some of the most shocking images ever broadcast on Channel4 we are told in a trite and hackneyed introduction from Jon Snow, very much in the style of Sheriff John Bunnell from World’s Wildest Police Videos - which is appropriate because the show that follows is very much Jon Snow’s Most Shocking Genocides by any other name.

They allowed the narrative of the documentary to be shaped by what un-aired clips they had and made no mention of events that they didn’t have new shocking gory footage of, for instance little was said of the concentration camps that hundreds of thousands of Tamil civilians were forced into – these are termed ‘welfare villages‘ by the Sri Lankan government, a chilling amelioration that belies the horrifying truth that sexual abuse, torture and starvation is endemic in these camps and at one point thousands were dying in the largest camp every week.

Civilians trapped between their own soldiers and the Sri Lankan army who were bent on state-sanctioned genocide

Interview questions also never really go beyond the obvious, often merely reiterating what has already been said or was explicitly shown in video footage. At its best, the narration of the new footage points out the disparity between the State’s account of events and what is being shown – particularly when showing that key LTTE figures were summarily executed after their surrender was accepted (and in one case sexually assaulted, probably raped) rather than Killed In Action as claimed. At its worst, it is sensationalising and exploitative – building up the emotional impact of the images, providing callous atrocity as a form of entertainment. But perhaps this was to be expected, this is after all the broadcaster that gave us the exploitative modern-day freak-show of its Bodyshock series, trailers for which stopped just short of calling out ‘Roll up! Roll up! ladies and gents, with terror and revulsion feast your eyes upon The Girl With an Arsehole on Her Face!’

Issues of sensitivity and its limited depth aside, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields gives a compelling and seemingly accurate account of the unlawful behaviour of military forces in the northern theatre of the latest civil war.

We’re shown targeted shelling by Sri Lankan forces of crowded hospitals(to such a degree that doctors requested the Red Cross to stop sharing hospitals’ GPS locations with the Sri Lankan government) within civilian camps in areas the government had laughably designated ‘no-fire zones’. We see a sustained and targeted campaign of extermination against the civilians who had fled to the no-fire zone, and then once the government designated a new one on the east coast we are shown how the armed forces cut the zone in two with a sustained artillery barrage so they could arrest those who fled east and herd them into internment camps . Tamil civilians found themselves trapped between their own soldiers (who weren’t willing to let their human shield leave) and the Sri Lankan army who were apparently bent on state-sanctioned genocide.

Tamil civilians fleeing Killinochi (Image: Tamils Rehabilitation Organization)

All journalists, NGOs, international observers and most UN staff had been expelled from the region before the government’s offensive. Consequently the majority of the footage used for the documentary was from shot by civilian amateurs and by victims themselves. The story their footage tells bears witness to crimes against humanity committed by both combatant factions, neither showing much concern for the suffering and deaths of those whose lives they were fighting over. But the last portion of ‘Killing Fields, introduced by another Jon-Snow-channelling-John-Bunnell introduction, was made up largely of the trophy videos filmed on the perpetrators’ mobile phones. It is this last third of the documentary that has proved the most controversial.

Clips of dead child soldiers, mutilated Tamil civilians, bound and helpless prisoners being executed and the naked corpses of raped Tamil women being piled on trucks while those throwing the bodies joke about which one has “the best figure.”

A particularly disturbing moment is when one soldier remarks, ”I really want to cut her tits off. If no one was around”, in Sinhalese. Humanity has been lowered in your estimation so much by this point that you find yourself reassured that this implies someone in the Army’s command structure wouldn’t approve of further mutilations.

There is a troubling air of spectacle in the way these images are treated though, through its commentary and the questionable choice to put a cheesy horror film soundtrack behind footage of war crimes – this incidentally, by displacing the atrocities from their callous and everyday context, was every bit as inappropriate a choice as the Benny Hill theme tune would have been. It wasn’t the same atrocity exhibition being put on by those filming these war crimes, it was a more human form of exploitation – using these images purely for their shock value.

To be honest I wasn’t that disturbed by what I saw. I am both a very jaded horror film fan and have never shied away from real-life footage of this nature – to be honest I had already seen much of what was included in Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields circulating on the internet. I’ve seen people killed literally in front of me, and while I was shocked at the time – it hasn’t stayed with me as trauma. So perhaps I am just failing to understand the effect these scenes have had on some viewers, but to me it was the way in which they were broadcast that was troubling and I wasn’t the only one.

Even those who felt the way ‘Killing fields handled events was laudable made comparisons between its later footage and horror film excess. Most eloquent among detractors, who felt the scenes shouldn’t have been broadcast, was Serena Davies writing for The Torygraph;

Watching these films made me retch and I wonder quite what the purpose was of viewers being exposed to such horror. Snow said he believed the films should be made public, but why to the British public? Should untutored members of another nation, one on the other side of the world and with no claims now over its former colony, be the people to bear witness to such grotesque behaviour, watching a sequence of these squalid little films and adding a final violation of the victims’ privacy? Surely they are a matter for the experts, for the international arbiters of justice and human rights. In this instance, TV, with its sensationalising soundtrack and its graphic intimacy, seemed the wrong way to present yet another reminder of man’s capacity for evil.

Another obvious critic is the Sri Lankan government. They have released an official statement registering their concern at the ‘distress’ possibly faked footage may have caused viewers, and trying to portray their cover-up attempts as part of an effort to heal old wounds.

The Sri Lankan government is concerned about the distress the images in the Channel 4 film aired without any guarantee of their authenticity might have caused to the viewers … This is an exercise which is carried out by a small section of international media at the behest of certain parties with vested interests and it caters only to the interests of separatist forces living outside Sri Lanka, the final objective of which is to push Sri Lanka back to war, by way of lacerating the wounds that the country is attempting to heal.

This is almost verbatim their response to the last broadcast of evidence of these war crimes, but both sets of footage have been independently authenticated by the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions. The Sri Lankan government’s seeking to pretend that these events are now just a painful history to be forgotten and healed is not just disingenuous - I think it is a fundamental misapprehension of how social trauma heals, the same one I feel critics like Serena Davies are labouring under.

I’m going to make a few gross simplifications here, so sorry for that.

In the foundational texts of trauma studies, for instance the works of Cathy Caruth, trauma is often identified as a problem of knowing or witnessing. On experiencing a traumatic event, the individual is overwhelmed by the impossibility of ‘being there’ and cannot cope with, or integrate, the emotions and ideas involved with that experience into their own personal narrative. With this gap in their own history, rather than remembering the trauma per se they are compelled to return to it. This is a post-Freudian notion, but should not be confused with the Freudian concept of repressed material returning subconsciously. Trauma here returns literally, the victim is compelled to repeat or re-enact the trauma through flashbacks, nightmares, emotional states or – most tragically – through a physical repetition of the traumatic event. Victims of these traumas often organize their entire lives around repeated patterns of reliving and warding off the influence of these traumatic memories.

Now obviously nations are not people, it is not merely a matter of up-scaling. In dealing with this international trauma, neither Sri Lanka, the Tamil people nor the international community should be thought of in such away. But the central issues remain the same. In national social trauma there is always a problem of witnessing, either through the dissociative effect of trauma, but on a mass-scale, or through other forces(often those who caused the trauma) co-opting the traumatised into a narrative that prevents it from being adequately and accurately integrated into their history. Some peoples have combated this by ‘re-storying’ their narrative, as post-colonial authors like Chinua Achebe have tried to when confronting imperial literature for ownership of their people’s traumatic colonial history.

This traumatic problem of witnessing was pronounced in Sri Lanka. Not only because of the massive personal trauma people were suffering (and in channel 4′s camp footage you can see this; people struck by the sight of their dead loved ones, seemingly unaware of the mortal peril they are in) or because of the expulsion of journalists and other international observers from the region, but also because the world’s media failed in bearing witness to these atrocities.

According to Jane's information group, the LTTE have carried out over 160 suicide bombings - causing serious damage to military and economic targets (Image: Duminda Jayasena)

I would argue that partly they just didn’t know how to tell the story, when they could not fit it into a normal victim/oppressor narrative. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had many of the accoutrements of modern statehood but are officially considered a terrorist organisation by some states. It was the LTTE that resurrected the use of suicide bombers, and they have been brutal and anti-democratic in dealing with opposition – they were ‘unmournable’ lives in the press.

The UK media seemed to do better than most. Though this is not to their credit, it was entirely due to the protests of the considerable Tamil population in Britain. But even these protests went seriously underreported.

Perhaps the protesters demands were too moderate to attract interest; some were calling for a secular two state solution, but most just wanted international pressure for peace negotiations. But again I believe it was the presence of the Tamil Tiger flag at these protests and the fact that the situation could not be made into an easy victim/oppressor morality tale. A tale like those that are told about Darfur, the Occupied Territories or Syria. This is an attitude that needs to change if we are to ‘heal’ the traumatic breach in Sri Lanka, find justice for victims and prevent the physical return of this trauma.

Mahinda Rajapaksa; president, tyrant, and now role model. (Image: Nader Daoud)

If the concept of that most tragic repetition of this genocide seems too abstract and shamelessly theoretical, then consider that some of the world’s most brutal regimes have been eagerly seeking president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s advice in deploying “the Sri Lankan solution” in crushing their own insurgencies. Burma’s dictator, Than Shwe, visited president Rajapaksa so he could apply methods used in Sri Lanka against ethnic groups in Burma. Then Thailand’s prime minister made a similar trip, referencing a need to learn lessons to be applied to Southern Thailand’s Muslim insurgency.

As Serena Davies found watching Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields made her “retch”, I feel similarly sickened by the idea of allowing the spread of this technique of applying illegal and merciless scorched-earth tactics against both combatants and civilians without distinction. If we are not proactive in seeking to truly heal the trauma in Sri Lanka, then these killing fields could spawn a legacy of genocides and atrocities committed against some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.

The best chance at justice and halting this process before it starts is for the UN to refer the case to the ICC, but this currently seems unlikely. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon is still rejecting his own organisation’s report identifying Sri Lankan government complicity in war crimes and the Sri Lankan government has disbanded its token efforts at investigation before completion.

Ban Ki-Moon has suggested that he will only establish an international investigation into these atrocities with the Sri Lankan government’s consent – which is quite frankly a completely bat-shit ridiculous notion – or through a decision from UN member states in the Human Rights Council or UN Security Council. As the chances that the Russians or Chinese – both permanent members of the UN Security Council – will waver in their unquestioning support of Sri Lanka’s impunity are extremely slim, that leaves the option of compelling the UNHRC to action and to do that the press needs to first solve this problem of witnessing. Channel4′s Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, exploitative or not, is a solid first step.

Death of Brian Haw

(image: Steve Punter)

By Elliot Adams

Brian Haw is dead. This is not an obituary though, unless the circumstances of death are extraordinary, I don’t see the point of giving strangers’ deaths undue attention – no one’s life becomes more interesting after their leaving it and no one dies before their time, to me that’s what ‘their time’ means. So it goes.

I understand that Brain Haw was a great symbolic asset to the anti-war movement, with his unmovable peace-camp shaming the government on the doorstep of their seat of power. He was emblematic of everything the anti-war movement thought it wants to be, earnest, persistent, speaking truth to power, unmovable. Even his iconic fishing hat has symbolic power, it was covered in so many slogans and badges that it looked uncannily like an old-school combat helmet – a man armoured with his peaceful ideals.

His peace-camp meant absolutely jack all to me though. The movement that gathered around him was less a protest, and more a tea-partyesque confused outburst. His protesting was about how y’know, the man is committing genocide because of oil and stuff. His ranting about how 9/11 was an inside job and accusing tourists of sticking “broomsticks up people’s arses” was hardly a notable contribution to the debate over war in Iraq, in-a-word it was ‘confused’. As were those who gathered to support him there, a motley collection of conspiracy theorists, 9/11 truthers and a small number of genuine peace protesters – even then, their arguments and goals were ill-defined and incoherent.

Security in Westminster, especially around Whitehall, is tighter now than it was at the height of the IRA's mass murders. (Image:Stock)

It’s not that I’m some kind of pro-war Blairite nor that I’m against protesting the war, I marched through London’s streets and protested in Parliament Square with everyone else. For me though, Brian Haw’s death is something of a memento mori for those same protest-friendly streets. Thanks to the fight between Haw and the local authorities Parliament Square is now fenced off from the public and guarded by security patrols. Every key location throughout Westminster is peppered with blast barriers, anti-ram bollards and outposts of heavily armed policemen. Then when there is a reasoned protest, as opposed to aimless squatting, the police presence is easily large enough to occupy a small country.

With all the cordons, fences, concrete defences and machine-guns, approaching the Houses of Parliament feels a little like you are crossing the lines at Ypres. Compare this with the surroundings of City Hall over in the Borough’s Glass Testicle(I actually love the way City Hall looks, but it is somewhat testicular in shape), everywhere is open and there are wide public space always being used for events, socialising and protest.

Members of the voting public have less physical access to their representatives in than ever. The public is now prevented from entering Downing Street itself by massive spiked iron gates and armed policemen. Whereas in the House of Commons a bulletproof glass screen now separates MPs from the chamber, and it is rare that they will meet the public outside of carefully stage-managed events – and it is even worse in Holyrood.

Downing Street behind bars. (Image: Courtney Powell)

I used to think that the level of access we were afforded to our government was something Britain could be proud of on the international stage, it was no rarity to see protesters in the Houses of Parliament, unfurling banners from Big Ben, or – in one particularly memorable incident – laying down turf across the entrance to Parliament. Where else could you see that, when was the last time protesters re-landscaped the Whitehouse lawn? But now with our access to political representatives being increasingly sanitised, I can’t help but think that those same representatives are becoming increasingly sanitised themselves. So many of our most successful MPs are these chinless media types with enormous estates and meticulously controlled branding that haven’t worked outside the Westminster village in years – frankly, I preferred Brian Haw.

Update: Sad to hear all this stuff about how after his diagnosis Haw was taken for a ride by all these conspiracy theorists and snake oil peddlers. Apparently – I haven’t had a chance to properly confirm this for myself – the “doctor” who was treating him in Germany was no longer legally allowed to practice medicine in his own country and had some fraud and unlawful killing convictions to his name, word is he was prescribing Haw a treatment of vitamin C and Bicarb of soda. This low end of fake/alternative medicine is a shameful scam, the best thing their practitioners can do with their earnings at this stage is buy a nice suit to kill themselves in. 

Preventing Terrorism With Petit-Fascist Distractions?

Home Secretary Theresa May accused past anti-extremism strategies of engaging with groups that they "should have been confronting" and proscribing (image: ukhomeoffice)

By Elliot Adams

I’m unsettled by the shift in purpose in the governments counter-terrorism measures. I was rather hoping this would be one of the issues where the Lib-Dem part of the coalition won out over the Tories. Unfortunately, in the run up to last week’s release of the government’s updated Prevent counter-terrorism strategy there were numerous concerning hints in the press that this was not going to be the case.

These showed a coalition that was shifting from a strategy of preventing violent extremism by engaging with non-violent radical groups, to one of pursuing extreme views(violent and non-violent) and survielling the communities that harbour these views.

Notably, there was the revelation that National Health Service doctors will be required to identify and report people who may be “vulnerable” to future recruitment by terrorist groups. This was one example of how the new Prevent is intended to bring an end to “ungoverned spaces” in education, in the NHS, charities and discussion forums. To this end, May criticised Muslim organisations for allowing extremist speakers – and under the updated Prevent allowing such views to be discussed could lead to the gathering of organisation members being proscribed.

Furthermore, in a stunning bit of scape-goating that could not possibly aid efforts against radicalisation, May accused Universities of “complacency” in tolerating radical views on campus. I had a crack at this on the day Prevent was published, needless to say I think such attitudes do more harm than good.

I’ve had a more in depth read through of the publication since, and I find myself returning to this issue of refusing to engage with – or even to outlaw – non-violent Muslim groups that give air to extreme views(it is almost entirely Islamist extremism addressed by Prevent, despite a few cursory nods to extreme right-wing or Irish terrorism).

In the past, to counter violent extremism, previous governments have worked with groups like Jamiat-e Islami who were ideologically supportive of some forms of non-violent political Islamism.

I’m not sure if anyone is really qualified to speak as to the efficacy of this, but to me this just makes sense in our national context. Many British Muslim families are of fairly recent immigrant origin, with early migrant communities being built at a time when their countries of origin were held together by a political Islamist social infrastructure. Therefore, the ideologies of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood shaped these communities on an organisational level.

Despite their possibly illiberal views, they were non-violent, connected and were a valuable communication point between these British Muslim communities and the anti-terrorism initiatives of the Police and government.

But the updated Prevent, precludes such communication. Prevent claims that the real problem is a dangerous ideology shared by both non-violent and violent groups, and as such, the government should not work with them at all.

Adding to these problems is that ‘extremist’ isn’t adequately defined in Prevent, nor has it been outside the report. It apparently encompasses those who have ‘un-british’ values, those who do not engage in ‘full participation in society’ and those who ‘implicitly tolerate the killing of British soldiers’.

But this is so vague you can contort it to include just about anyone you want to, This is the rare occasion that I agree with the Archbishop Cranmer Blog that “By codifying a set of values to which Muslim groups will need to subscribe, the Government is effectively reintroducing a Test Act: only those who profess adherence to the orthodoxy will be eligible for … government engagement.”

This will make impossible many valuable partners for the government and police against terrorist security threats. The little guidance Prevent gives on the matter implies that problematic views on gender rights would be enough to exclude a group, which is a subject that could exclude even moderate faith groups.

I understand the hesitancy to engage groups with Islamist influences that may have sympathy for more violent organisations, but we already have heavy-handed and impractical laws that forbid such groups from inciting violence
or religiously-based hatred. The conviction rate with these laws is miniscule, but as these groups haven’t even been threatened with prosecution surely they should be acceptable on those grounds?

To counter Islamist terrorism I can’t see why we wouldn’t want to work with – rather than against – the British Muslim community. They have been conducting a debate on these issues for a long time and, I think, because of these in-group discussions the influence of Islamism is nowhere near the strength it once was. I fear the attitudes revealed by Prevent risk undermining moderate positions in that debate, and legitimising more radical elements by publicly making a Pariah of politically-engaged Muslim groups.

Al Jazeera Vs. the BBC’s Faltering Global Voice

The BBC claim they aim to continue being the world's best known and most trusted provider of high quality impartial and editorially independent international news. But considering the alternatives to BBCWS is that enough?

By Elliot Adams

As much as I like to claim I hate blogging, it does provide an alternative outlet for my irritation to that of repeatedly bitching to my girlfriend about the same topics untill my fickle humming-birdesque mind flutters off to extract chagrin-necter from a new source. Of late she has been putting up with my gripes about presumptions old people, the borderline-corruption of the SNP and, most frequently, the painful cuts to the BBC World Service.

World Service is facing severe reduction of non-news programming, losing radio broadcasting in seven languages, stopping service fully in five further languages, closing hundreds of posts, cutting airtime down across the board and through all this reducing its audience by a conservatively predicted 30 million.

I have posted before praising the work the BBC World Service do globally – specifically the World Service Trust which provides media infrastructure as a form of international aid – so it isn’t surprising that I consider these cuts a loss. But my concern goes further than this, weakening the World Service at this time poses a threat to democracy and the international free press. For how and why, we should look to the small Gulf state of Qatar.

Qatar is the home of ever-controversial news broadcaster Al Jazeera, the strongest contender of a number of state-funded broadcasters ready to fight for a monopoly in territory World Service is being forced to withdraw from.

It’s not that I’m taking a dig at Al Jazeera here, there is much the fledgling broadcaster should be commended for.

They have been refreshingly progressive, as with their creative commons release of photographs and video footage(free to publish as long as you attribute it correctly) or their social media experiment The Stream, which, instead of reporting, merely use a selection of extracts from twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other social networking sites – it has predictably been an abject failure, but the point is they tried to stir things up technologically.

Likewise they stir things up politically, they haven’t just been reporting recent

As BBC Worldwide is closing its Serbian radio service, Al Jazeera is stepping in with 'Al Jazeera Balkans'.

pro-democracy uprisings, they have been catalysing them and one can’t help but feel sympathy for their plight in facing the threats and attacks of government forces in Cairo. As they did before in Iraq, being bombed by both the US airforce and by factions loyal to Saddam. Yet in both situations they provided fast on-the-ground coverage where others could not.

But this is Al Jazeera English, a slick and professional media operation – shaped in its early days by BBC staff and now itself staffed by many former employees of the BBC and it’s counterparts from Australia, the USA, Canada and the rest of the English-speaking world. It has no significant bias and covers the needs of a large international news agenda. But Al Jazeera Arabic is a different story. Long anti-western rants commonly pass without evidence or counter argument, there is a suggestion that its sympathies lie wholly with Islamist extremism as an ideology and its bias becomes disturbingly clear on a number of issues, especially on Israel and the occupied territories.

for example, watch this Al Jazeera English coverage of Lebanese man Samir Kuntar’s release from the prison term he served for remorselessly murdering a four-year-old Israeli girl – caving her skull in on the ground with his rifle butt. The coverage uses journalistic distance to observe and record the positive welcome he receives on release.

Now compare this footage from Al Jazeera‘s normal service, where the sycophantic interviewer tells us beloved “brother Samir” “deserves more than this” at the party Al Jazeera throws for Kuntar – complete with fireworks and a personalised cake.

This fork-tongued coverage is the least of it though, more troubling is when Al Jazeera walks in hand with the will of Qatar’s absolute monarchy. For example Al Jazeera has enthusiastically embraced pro-democracy movements in Yemen, Egypt, Syria and Libya, but has strangely been downplaying events in Bahrain. This point is subjective and just my opinion, but it is one shared by Al Jazeera’s Beirut bureau chief who resigned on that same opinion. The Emir of Qatar, like Al Jazeera supports change in Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Syria – but not in neighbouring Bahrain, where he has sent Qatari troops to quiet the revolt.

Al Jazeera allows Qatar to exert cultural influence on a scale previously unavailable to it through military or economical means, which perhaps explains the Emir’s astronomically great investment in a cutting-edge communications satellite to extend Al Jazeera’s reach deeper into Africa and Central-Asia.

The Emir of Qatar isn’t the only one to be trying to exert international power through the opinion-shaping power of international state-funded broadcasting. Iran has its Press TV, President Putin has The Voice of Russia(previously Radio Moscow) now broadcasting in 38 languages, and on television Putin’s media advisor Mikhail Lesin created Russia Today – broadcasting in English, Spanish and Arabic to echo Putin’s interests and prejudices. Whereas President Hu Jin-tao of the People’s Republic of China has already committed billions to the “fierce struggle in the domain of [international] news and opinion.” Lobbyists are getting in on he fight too, with billionaire Alex Mashkevich announcing what has been dubbed the ‘Jewish Al Jazeera’ to broadcast Pro-Israel opinion internationally.

I know that it may seem like an expensive extravagance to be providing news and other broadcasting around the world. But being selfish for a moment, I honestly don’t think that we can afford to leave large parts of the world with their international news dominated by propaganda outlets, denied impartial and honest news, to be aggressively lectured everyday by powers who’s aims and values are so directly opposed to that of the free society. I do not agree with this notion (that Clinton, Putin and Hu Jin-tao suggest) of a global war for influence in the airwaves, if BBC World Service(whether you believe they are truly impartial or not) is there to insure that there is more than one voice, more than one account, more than one truth – then it limits the options of those who would seek a monopoly for their voice, they must debate, they must engage with democracy and then their war is already over.

In Defense of the Burkha Ban

By Elliot Adams

France’s far-right appeasing Burkha ban has been writ in law for a while now, though it hasn’t been enforced and there has been some further political wrangling over just what the law means for France.

If you’ve managed to miss this part of Sarkozy‘s scheme to win the support of fools and fascists, it constitutes a full ban on covering the face in public – with the exception of people wearing motorcycle helmets and attending festivals. This is bad news for protesters, scarf-fanciers and people with excessive facial hair, but the main thrust of this attack is against muslim women who choose to wear the Niqab, Burkha or the Snood.

Now this sounds like an idiotic idea the 1st, 2nd and 99th time you hear it – but give it that magic 100th chance. You should do so because, properly enforced, it also means a ban on these fuckers;

The minarets of Disneyland’s castle represent the greater threat to western culture

When they’re not peddling cheap plastic child-silencers with the Disney brand’s formidable pester power, sexualising children or indoctrinating them with the many questionable ethical lessons of their films and characters, Disney are just busy being hella’ creepy.

With this new law we can hope that Disneyland Paris will be depopulated of its grotesque denizens. These tortured chimeras are victims too though, they cannot speak(their mouths stuffed with blackened gauss) and they cannot leave the confines of their phantasmagorical realm. As Sarkozy said, “We cannot accept … prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity” and quite rightly so, I can only assume he was thinking of the creatures in the ghetto of Disneyland Paris, their curse is to forever shamble through unreal streets with permanent smiles stretched over their faces and their unmoving dead eyes glaring for the next child to ensnare.

Disney's advertising publicly sexualises children, Burkhas publicly desexualise women - I think the former is worse.

Disney raises the West’s children, championing the bland and the insipid, replacing parenting with a multimedia feast of bright colours and unimaginative stories of outdated morality.

Disney is a bigger threat to Western culture than any act of religious devotion and this new law would strike a mighty blow against its heart of darkness in Disneyland paris – if I had my way Cinderella would be dragged from her home and shot behind the chemical sheds, but more moderate voices prevail for now. That is why the Burkha ban should have our support, only perhaps we should rename it to recognise our real enemy – henceforth it shall be known as ‘The Magic Kingdom Final Solution’.

Ready to be shipped to Paris at a moments notice.

We must of course make an example of their leader, Mickey ‘lord of the woods’ Mouse. Construction has already begun on his means of dispatch, to be placed in Place du Carrousel where the Parisian guillotine once sat.

Officials insist the Burkha ban is not discriminatory because it would apply to everyone, not just Muslims. By that logic however I would be unsurprised, though horrified, to see the suggestion of new laws prohibiting the possession of a yarmulhah, or the wearing of a crucifix. But I can hold out hope for the outlawing of oversized mouse ears and *shudder* child-like glee.

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Let's make it happen France, be cheese-eating victory monkeys. (Image: Unknown)

Pick of the Week 9/5

The soft underbelly of the right’s hard abs, by Amanda Marcotte for The Guardian, May 2011.

The anti gay-rights American right’s worship of hypermasculinty is immune to camp.

For all the posturing about toughness, the most salient aspect of this rightwing, over-the-top masculinity is how fragile it really is. The list of subversive threats that will topple redblooded American masculinity is mind-bogglingly long – and grows longer every day.

Somali Pirates’ Rich Returns, by Robert Young Pelton for Bloomberg Businessweek, May 2011.

The men who are earning ever more millions tax-free, now that the world’s attention is elsewhere.

he was merely a fisherman, enlisted to repel poachers. What money he earned, he shared with friends. This is a common refrain among Somali pirates: that they’re just poor fishermen taking up arms to defend the seas from the predatory practices of foreign poachers—the real piracy, in their view. Some …[claim] they go to sea to prevent toxic dumping, too, à la Greenpeace.

Paper Tigers, by By Wesley Yang for New York, May 2011.

What happens to overachieving Asian-Americans when they leave the grade-meritocracy of college?

She was trying to help him. ‘C’mon, smile, smile, and he was like …” And here Tran mimes the unbearable tension of a face trying to contort itself into a simulacrum of mirth.

Facebook Busted in Clumsy Smear on Google, by Dan Lyons for The Daily Beast, May 2011.

The escalating PR war between Facebook and Google over privacy issues and Google’s hunger for Facebook’s social networking territory.

Here were two guys from one of the biggest PR agencies in the world, blustering around Silicon Valley like a pair of Keystone Kops.

Nailing Osama: The media’s delight, by Danny Schechter for AlJazeera, May 2011.

The Emmy Award winning journalist and author of When News Lies: Media Complicity and the Iraq War dissects the role media-image management had on deciding how Osama Bin Laden was liquidated.

Even as the raid inspires mass euphoria and self-righteous blood lust, the full meaning of it is missing in a media that is much better at the how than the why.

The Information Sage, by Joshua Yaffa for Washington Monthly, May 2011.

Introducing Edward Tufte, trusted adviser to the Washington power elite who is revolutionizing how we visualise data.

good design … is not about making dull numbers somehow become magically exhilarating, it is about picking the right numbers in the first place.

Drinks at the Ritz – a tale of two cities, by Michael White for The Guardian, May 2011.

A conversation over Piccadilly appetizers with billionaire publisher Steve Forbes discussing cuts, the economy and the poor.

Needless to say Forbes’s own name does not appear in Forbes magazine’s list of the super-rich, any more than Rupert Murdoch’s appeared in this week’s Sunday Times 2011 Rich List. On Forbes estimate Rupe should be in there at No 11, worth £4.7bn, incidentally a lot more than Forbes.

The Immortal Horizon, by Leslie Jamison for The Believer, May 2011.

A race retracing the prison break of Martin Luther King’s killer, escaping Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary he only managed to cover eight miles of the daunting terrain in fifty-four hours.

The runners’ bibs say something different each year: SUFFERING WITHOUT A POINT; NOT ALL PAIN IS GAIN. Only eight men have ever finished. The event is considered extreme even by those who specialize in extremity.

Honourable mention also for this fantastic interactive infographic from informationisbeautiful’s David McCandless and Andy Perkins, weighing up the scientific evidence, or lack of, for popular health supplements.

Gaddafi, Nick Griffin, Judge Death and Frank Booth Want You to Vote Yes2AV

Contrary to popular belief Ming the Merciless actually would prefer full Runoff Voting

By Elliot Adams

With the AV referendum so close, I was hoping the Yes and No campaigns would actually start to treat the voting public like adults. Alas no joy. Both camps, who have adopted absurd textmessage-styled monikers like a 11-year-old girl’s AOL screename, reduced the debate to soundbites of course – for example, the No2AV camp are still endlessly reminding us that Clegg called AV a ‘miserable little compromise’, back when he considered that an insult and not his career choice. But this is sadly typical for referendums, where campaigners have truly gone above and beyond the call of idiocy is in their ludicrously deceptive scaremonging.

Both camps have been pathetically scrabbling for the right to use all the best hate figures, like they’re picking schoolyard teams for a game of assholeball. Team No2AV picked Nick Griffin first, claiming every vote for AV benefits the BNP. But Yes2AV also tried to nab Griffin for their team, arguing that what the BNP truly want – aside from a good slap – is a system of AV voting. Interestingly, theoreticians who subscribe to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Assholery theorise that this will leave Nick Griffin entangled in a quantum state where he is simultaneously pleased and disappointed, no matter how people vote – schrodinger’s twat.

This is a referendum on the methodology of accurately applying the mandate of the body politic to its representatives, it is not about how best to ward off the Bogeyman, Nick Griffin or Ming the fucking Merciless.

Both sides seem to have shown astounding contempt for the public’s intelligence. The No2AV camp, ran adverts balancing the alleged cost of changing our electoral system against the option of having policemen or bulletproof vests for soldiers, as if that was the choice anyone was offering here.

Then there were a slew of poorly thought out sporting metaphors, because clearly the proles can’t understand electoral reform unless it’s put in the context of ball games or hitting each other. Conservative campaigners have run a billboard showing two boxers, one of whom is lying defeated on the floor – but the referee has claimed him as the victor, because ‘Under AV the loser can win’. It’s been a while since I’ve bothered watching the boxing, but I seem to remember boxing matches only involving two fighters. I must be forgetfully getting the details of pugilism wrong though, because otherwise it wouldn’t work as a metaphor for AV at all would it? Cricketers, footballers and the grand national made an appearance to tell us how AV would be like cheating in that particular sport – by extension of course that means it’d be cheating in elections too because all sports are essentially identical to voting, with their winning and losing and suchlike.

The most absurdly emotive and reductive argument though was from the Yes2AV camp. This occurred with the release of a video starring a frail-looking world war II veteran. Accompanied by soulfull piano music, he explains how he fought the Nazis for democracy and yet our current evil and dastardly electoral system has ‘confiscated’ his vote in every election since. It is claimed he ‘might as well have died … on the D-Day beaches.’ Not voting for AV basically means people shouldn’t have bothered trying so hard to win World War II.

The Yes2AV camp is relying solely on a narrative of irrelevancies and terrifying unlikely potential outcomes that are completely irrelevant to AV. While the No2AV camp have used equally ridiculous claims and scare mongering, apparently motivated by the belied that we are too stupid to understand AV – ie. too stupid to understand the notion of marking a piece of paper with numbers instead of a single ‘X’.

At the end of it all, no matter which way you vote in the referendum none of these politically useful bogeymen like Nick Griffin are going to suddenly find themselves in power. So un-baton the hatches, unlock your daughters, and throw away those last few bullets you were saving for you and the children – though you should still probably vote No2AV because I heard Ming the Merciless was voting yes.

Bravemouth

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Alex Salmond at the launch of the failed and much maligned ‘national conversation’ on independence [Image: Harris Morgan

By Elliot Adams

In our childhood it's easy to find ourselves deifying action film heroes. But because their personalities are so ludicrously adonised by hollywood scripts and interviews, they are almost fated to disappoint - by their descent into such ugly areas as alcoholism, racism or even politics.

With Sean Connery there have been many such disappointments. From his repeated advocacy of hitting women, to his being entangled in corruption scandals. Most lamentably though, despite living thousands of miles away and essentially rejecting the UK until it is dismantled as a nation, Connery insists on using his considerable finances and fanatical devotion to the Scottish Nationalist Party to meddle in UK politics from abroad.

With an election in Edinburgh looming, he's sticking his oar into UK politics again with a pundit-piece in today's  'Express - 'why it must be the SNP', or something similar. The argument was the same independence-obssessed pomposity that he normally trots out about vague notions connected with political wrangling back in 1704 or based on the - extremely fictional - movie Braveheart.

The first issue with this is that - as Sean Connery would know if he hadn't been living elsewhere for decades - at present the SNP have practically nothing to do with the idea of Scottish independence. Now don't confuse my self-conscious snarkiness for an interest in any sort of independence-debate, like most of the population of Scotland nothing bores me more(the Union Jack in my avatar is only there because it looks rad), it is simply a dead issue.

Studies and surveys have shown negligible support for the idea and the half million the SNP wasted on 'the national conversation' - consulting the public on independence - was reported as having been met with "absolute indifference" outside a small racist core of SNP activists.

There are lingering legal questions about Connery, who lives as a tax-exile abroad contributing financial to a political party in the UK.

This is actually good for the SNP and the incompetent shitehawk at their helm, Alex Salmond. They currently have the backing of many centre-right voters and some of the right-wing press, The Sun for instance. But only because independence isn’t on even the longest of the SNP’s long-term agendas. If it were, then their ephemeral popularity would disappear as they are unfriended, unfollowed and blocked by their friend-list of Conservative voters and even more so with the press – none of the major newspapers in Scotland support independence.

Not that this deters Connery, who considers independence a certainty, and soon at that – what can I say, some people see a glass and say it’s half full, and other people see a glass and say it’s a fucking aquarium. As Connery is doing in California, the elections for the regional Scottish executive are certain to be wrongly interpreted in a context of national politics and independence by most of fleet street. Labour gains will be seen as public anger at the coalition’s attacks on public services, Lib-dem losses will be seen as the student voters’ revenge for the tuition fees betrayals, and SNP gains will be seen as somehow endorsing independence. In reality the SNP will merely be the most convenient stick to beat labour with, without voting for the lib-dems.

The axioms of Scottish politics have long dictated that a Conservative government combined with the bureaucratic muddle of the Scottish executive would be a boon for the SNP. The theory being that nationalists would be supported by an electorate reacting strongly against the rule of a government with so little mandate granted to it in Scotland. But untill recently Labour had been pulling way ahead of the SNP in the polls, as the public seemed to be deciding that Labour would be more suited to the task of protecting Scotland from Conservative policies than the SNP who have relied on Conservative votes to pass all their budgets.

That it is looking like the SNP might win the day is solely a testament to the power of television. Alex Salmond is an awkward troll of a man, with a face like a knuckle balancing precariously above several chins, he seems to me ineloquent and easily confused at first minister’s questions. But Salmond’s charismatic performance on-screen is superior by far to his opponents – particularly Labour leader Iain Gray. Any serious Westminster politician would have ripped Salmond and the SNP apart on their record and desperate eleventh-hour undeliverable promises, but the current opposition in Scotland are simply not up to the task.

I’m really embracing my bias here, but I find the idea of voting for the SNP in the coming election repugnant and it truly makes me fear for the future of Scotland.

There are of course problems with the SNP’s consistency and credibility as a serious political entity, for example think of their last-minute U-turns over issues like the proposals of the Calman commision – which they were seemingly opposing just because the Unionist parties were supporting them.

Then there are also ethical concerns with the SNP’s behaviour, they orchestrated the selling off of Scotland’s forests by stealth, despite their assurances to the contrary. They constructed a case for Scottish fiscal autonomy on skewed figures and omitted evidence. Most morally shaky is the fact that they had apparently prepared a deal to release the Lockerbie bomber in quid pro quo trade for human rights exemption over prisoners ‘slopping-out’ and perhaps also devolved gun control if they could swing it – a fairly large departure from the party-line that it was a ‘compassionate release’ guided by Scottish law.

But it’s not these or even a sense of self-preservation as a student in Scotland that disturbs me about the idea of voting SNP in May – it’s the SNP’s lacking economic literacy.

The nationalists have come under fire from small business, the public sector and big business for their lack of economic competency during the financial crisis. Cancelled transport projects, a failure to reform the public sector, the imposition of a supplementary business rate and other slip-ups contributed to this, particularly in rousing the Confederation of British Industry’s ire. But generally it has been the perception that they have been fiddling while Rome burns with their expensive and often pointless schemes to hold a ‘national conversation’ on independence or translate Scottish road signs into near-dead languages. Then there’s the SNP’s huge administration costs, this sort of failure to impose efficiency cuts on themselves when they are cutting so much elsewhere has been absurd.

It’s going to get worse too. The build up to these elections have been taking place under the threat of the most dramatic change in Scotland’s finances since the acts of union. The Barnett Formula gives £1600 a head more public expenditure in Scotland than in England. Starting next year the OBR will be attempting to devise a substitute for Barnett, most likely needs-based. That would leave Scotland with a funding shortfall of about five million pounds. It is in this context that Salmond has produced an election manifesto postponing financial cuts, pledging no compulsory redundancies for civil servants and promising a council tax freeze for five years costing more than a billion pounds.

So, in short: screw you Sean Connery, Timothy Dalton was a better Bond anyway. Out of vitriol, goodnight.