The Politics of Dancing

With apologies to any readers overseas, for whom this post must seem somewhat arcane I post the full correspondence, to date with Chris Grayling minister at The Department of Work and Pensions, (DWP). I promised Mr Grayling right of reply and hereby produce his response to my open letter and my response to his response. From: Alex Talbot [mailto:alextalbot116@gmail.com] Sent: 21 February 2012 04:24 To: GRAYLING, Chris Subject: WORKFARE Dear Chris Grayling,   It used to be the greatest of all slurs to accuse a ‘gentleman’ of lying; indeed there was a time when men fought duels protesting the accusation, some dying in the process. Those times have gone, now recourse is more readily made to the courts in the form of libel actions, to be accused of lying in public still therefore carries some ignominy. So with this in mind I accuse of you of being a liar. I quote you in full:-   “We won’t and don’t force anyone to take a work experience p...

We are having something of an early spring here at the moment, yesterday was 13 degrees, my neighbours across the way held a picnic on the roof. Here I am under siege with workmen, already intent on turning the communal hallway into a dusty and dirty quagmire, about to turn their attentions onto my flat tomorrow. This is all part of a fire safety upgrade, I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather be immolated. Being a bibliophile is like one of those double edged curses you find in fairy tales, the love of books will greatly enhance your life, however they will slowly take over your living space and you will be reduced to something akin to a distraught hen whose day old chicks are threatened whenever they are damaged or threatened by damage, e.g. by marauding workmen.* Currently I am reading 'I Want to Live' by Nina Lugovskaya, an achingly sad account of a schoolgirl growing up in Stalin’s USSR, as you read her diary you   know at the end that she is to be arrested and sent to the Gu...

There is something in American TV drama that its British equivalent lacks, which is not to say that British TV drama at its best is not amongst the best in the world. This lacking element feels difficult to pin down, the closest I can get to describing it is sex appeal, a va va voom factor. This is particularly true of The Good Wife http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-good-wife/4od. It is a cracking series, not afraid to tackle big issues, like the American use of torture, huge inequalities in the US legal system and the abuse of immigrant labour; it even found time to tackle British super injunctions, admittedly in one of its weaker episodes. This week’s episode tackled the draconian and Kafkaesque US anti terror laws. Alicia Florick, played by Julianna Margulies packs enough sex appeal to light up the most mundane drama, when combined with a script that crackles with sexual tension against a background of complex marital and personal relationships and even more complex ...

This gang of notorious confidence tricksters are known to have been working in your area, approach with extreme caution and watch out for your wallet, your watch and even your small change. Hapless members of the public have been tricked by this gang out of their benefits, their human rights and even their medical treatment. It is now suspected that this gang is not working alone and indeed have a great many accomplices. In particular keep an eye out for someone called Nick ‘the seducer’ Clegg, whose tactic is to lure his victims by making a string of promises he has no intention of keeping only then to leave them in the lurch. The gang consists of:- Chris ‘the dissembler’ Grayling. A particularly unpleasant member of the gang he is wanted for theft of human rights, human trafficking involving the use of coercion and forced labour and the theft of benefits. David ‘the Toff’ Cameron. He is known to be the leader of the gang and the mastermind behind all of the various scams curr...

Dear Chris Grayling, It used to be the greatest of all slurs to accuse a ‘gentleman’ of lying; indeed there was a time when men fought duels protesting the accusation, some dying in the process. Those times have gone, now recourse is more readily made to the courts in the form of libel actions, to be accused of lying in public still therefore carries some ignominy. So with this in mind I accuse of you of being a liar. I quote you in full:- “We won’t and don’t force anyone to take a work experience placement. Where we use mandation in our welfare policies, it will be to do useful work on community projects. We will never mandate anyone to work for a big company. They wouldn’t take them if we did." This cannot be dressed up as being ‘economical with the truth,’ as being disingenuous or telling half truths, it is a bare faced lie. Unemployed persons as I write are being used as unpaid labour under compulsion, i.e. the threat of loosing their benefits, in the following ‘big’ c...

In 1989 the Iranian regime passed a death sentence, a 'fatwa,' on the novelist Salman Rushdie, it was, as Nick Cohen has observed 'the Dreyfus Affair" of our age, a central signifier of our preoccupations, one which was to divide friends and bring out the unbelievable and perverse where you least expected it.' Amongst those involved in the 'affair' was Cat Stevens, Originally Steven Demetre Georgiou, alias Steve Adams, alias Cat Stevens, alias Yusef Islam, now just plain Yusef, (the man seems to have a positive mania for re-inventing himself). Some might say that Mr Stevens contribution was, how can I put this, somewhat intemperate. You can judge for yourselves by watching the video below. However Mr Stevens seems to have a somewhat confused memory of these events, I quote in full:- "I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini - and still don't. ... When asked about my opinion re...

Mr Trevor Kavanagh's rants in yesterdays Sun newspaper and on the BBC, are surely a case of chutzpah writ in neon lights and accompanied by dancing girls, and is all the more irritating for having more than a kernel of truth about it, press freedom is under threat at the moment and the process of investigative journalism is imperilled. Who however brought about this state of affairs? The lawless bullying and thuggery of News International has for years distorted the democratic process, subverted the police and ruined the lives of countless people, all under the protective cloak of freedom of the press. They have not served the public interest but undermined it. They have made the trivial and the squalid important and driven popular culture to ever greater depths. They have debased the currency of debate and fed the British public on a diet of half truths and downright lies. Imagining themselves above the law they sought to play the role of puppet masters whilst squaring things wit...

A few years ago when I was working for the probation service I had a client who boasted a strong moral compass, he would not, he explained, burgle anyone who could ‘not take the hit.’ Everyone he burgled was covered by insurance. When I tried to convey to him the sense of invasion and violation experienced by burglary victims he was unmoved, ‘if they didn’t want to risk this they shouldn’t have so many possessions.’ I though of this client the other day whilst watching Paul Dacre editor of the Daily Mail, draped from head to foot in righteous indignation after the Mail was attacked by Hugh Grant. Incidentally the front page of today’s Mail is worth a laugh.* 'Christianity under attack: Anger as major court rulings go against British worshippers • Town hall prayers banned in 'assault on Britain's Christian heritage' • Judge rules tradition unlawful after he upholds discrimination complaint • Government says it is 'surprised and disappointed' by the dec...

Watching reports and horrific descriptions of the situation in Homs in Syria after Assad was given the green light by the Russian and Chinese veto, a bombardment with some parallels to that inflicted on Gaza by the Israeli’s. What of the reaction of the misnamed Stop the War Coalition, are they demonstrating outside the Syrian embassy? Calling for action against the Assad regime? Are they holding candle lit vigils, signing petitions against the violence of the Assad regime, demanding a stop to this war? No, I quote:- ‘ We therefore oppose any foreign attempts to create an unrepresentative “government-in-exile”, which would have no purpose beyond further legitimising the case for military intervention. World opinion, as expressed at the United Nations, is also clearly against any interference in Syria, with China, Russia, India and Brazil among those opposed.’ So there you have it, our self styled left wing peace loving radicals stand shoulder to shoulder with the reactionary reg...

Good morning from a snow covered London. It is now approaching four years since I started the blog and with, given my last post, an odd Synchronicity this was a response to a a self styled radical and edgy ‘comedian’ Mark Steele, see:- http://alextalbot.blogspot.com/2008/02/mark-steel-open-letter.html . Incidentally I e-mailed the article to Mr Steele to allow him right of reply but to date have not received a response, the offer remains open. The same applies of course to Mr Dara O Briain or anyone else who feels that I have traduced them in this space. In those four years the blog has grown and readership, though still modest, has grown with it, so thank you for reading me, it would be good if the traffic were a little more two-way and I would glad to hear from anyone and would particularly like to hear from any readers in the US, as you represent my second largest audience after the UK. However I am always grateful for anyone who takes time to read my rants, musings an...

Dara Ó Briain says there are two reasons he does not do jokes about Muslims 1) because he does not know anything about Muslims and 2) apparently neither do we. Well this may well be the case, though Mr Briain should be wary assuming that everyone else shares his real or pretended ignorance. For in this multi cultural society is it not a bit lame to say you know nothing about Islam. But surely the key point here is that he omits a third, far more important reason, why he does not want to tell jokes about Islam, that is that he does not wish to have his throat slit whilst leaving the theatre one dark night by some crazed fundamentalist fanatic. This may not be brave, but it is a very legitimate concern. Moreover not being over endowed with physical courage my self I am hardly in a position to criticize. No the really cowardly thing here is to dress up your legitimate concern for your own safety as some sort of high moral stand and in so doing help to disguise the real...

THE INVISIBLE AND THE DEAD We live so they say in an information age; we only have to use Google to trawl the internet to uncover information that would otherwise be hidden from us. However this very plethora of information buries us unless we find some way to filter it. Mostly we do so by restricting ourselves to causes and interests close to our heart, the rest stays silent. In that silence lives are lived out, or disposed of, prayers go unanswered, dreams are dreamt hopes are extinguished, or kept alive, barely flickering, in a ferocious wind. There is suffering and injustice in far away countries of which we know little. This is how it has always been. In the ‘Information Age’ we must inevitably filter to enable ourselves to cope, we have lives to lead. Here I try to briefly illuminate, like a military flare, some of those who might otherwise be invisible both to you and I and some of the recently dead. AFRICANS IN ISRAEL FACE PERSECUTION http://caravanmagazine.in/Stor...