The Politics of Dancing

The Prime Minister states that there was no grand deal done with the Murdoch’s, as if anyone believed that Murdoch and Cameron had sat down together and engaged in the following conversation. M: “Well Dave let’s get it out on the table, as the actress said to the Bishop,, you ok my BSkyeB bid and my newspapers will back you. C: Yes Mr Murdoch Sir, I hope the minute taker got that, just so that everything now is clear.” This is not, to quote Mr Murdoch, the way he does business. Nothing so crude or stupid would ever occur. No, nods, winks, and hints are more than adequate. “Read your speech Mr Murdoch, have to say I agree that Offcom seriously needs it wings clipping.” “Yes Dave, and I know that Becky Brookes was very impressed by your speech on the Euro, I think she’s definitely warming to you.” All “tiny chats,” asides and pre dinner smiles, this is how the wheels turn, no palms greased, no brown envelopes and definitely no paper trail unless someone has cocked up, which as...

LONDON LETTER 28th APRIL 2012 It seems to be raining in London now in proportions that would cause Mr Noah some concern; the sky is constantly slate grey and even when the sun does break through it does so merely to tease. I have been absorbed by Leveson [1] and all events political. It is ironic that these events have taken place in a week when the BBC has moved its morning breakfast show to Manchester, in a silly attempt to be ‘politically sensitive’ and   to appease the anti-London brigade and show the BBC’s ‘commitment’ [2] to the north. The result, as of course any halfwit could foresee, is that non of the primary actors in this unfolding drama was anywhere near the studio, all the interviews took place by video link from London! The shortlist of the Orwell prize has been released with Christopher Hitchens exorcised from the list. (Nick Cohen, whose wonderful book You Can’t Read This Book, was released in January is not on the list either). This from a prize th...

http://alextalbot2024.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/2024the-last-revolutionary.html I wrote 2024 during the early part of 2007, still in the Blair years and still under the shadow of the events of the 9 th of September 2001 . The reaction to the events of that day saw the greatest ever sustained assault on civil liberties in this country. The political climate was ominous, in the name of the War on Terror the government sought ever greater powers to control and peer into the daily lives of its citizens. There seemed to be no popular opposition to these measures and when there was not silence there was the sound of great many cheerleaders from both the right and left of the political spectrum cheering these measures on. The little resistance this trend encountered tended to be weak and largely ineffective. Things improved temporarily after the election of the present government, who were elected partly on a ticket of improved civil liberties, however at a speed that has surprised eve...

  LORD LEVESON RUPERT MURDOCH JAMES MURDOCH NEWS INTERNATIONAL JEREMY HUNT

Watching Leveson, Prime Ministers Questions and Jeremy Hunt’s statement, on a day when the Tory mishandling of the economy was fully exposed as GDP dropped yet again, we are now in a double dip recession. Leaving aside the disastrous implications of the latter, [1] for a first class political geek like me it was a bit like Christmas coming early. Greater love for himself hath no politician than he ask that his political advisor lay down his career for him. What a difference a day makes, 24 little hours, yesterday coming from a department that was stating that nothing untoward had taken place. We are asked to believe that Hunt's Special Advisor, Adam Smith, went far outside his remit in cosying up to BskyB and in providing them with a information back channel, if that is the case then the question arises, why, what possible motivation would he have for acting so independently of Hunt? Ed Miliband, who is incidentally the real hero of the hour, for if it had not been for pressu...

There is an object heading for the good ship Cameron about the size of the iceberg that sank the Titanicand like that iceberg the largest portion is currently hidden. The object comes in the form of the forthcoming testimony to the Leveson enquiry by Rupert and James Murdoch. Mr Murdoch Senior is not noted for his magnanimity and though he may have had, if he is to be believed, ‘the humblest day of [his] life,’ by and large, I think it is fair to say, ‘he does not do humble.’ Cameron dropped the Murdoch’s like a dirty handkerchief when the whole phone hacking scandal broke open and in so doing he has inadvertently handed Murdoch a stage on which to play a scorned and maligned Brutus. Cameron’s diaries dated 2008/09/10 sit like unexploded bomb in his drawer. Cameron, respected prefect and now Head Boy has been visiting the Murdoch brothel doing things that he would rather had remained private; unfortunately for him the unspoken contract by which these practices were kept secre...

This essay is written very much from a Bulgarian perspective and I am certain that there are many who will take issue with my account of events. I welcome any such contribution to the blog. In this country we are currently being bombarded by some extremely sickly commemorations of the sinking of the luxury liner Titanic, on which 1,517 died. As it happens 2012 also happens to be the anniversary of the outbreak of the First Balkan war, which led in turn to the Second Balkan War; Apart from the losses and victims which cannot be exactly ascertained, the toll of the two Balkan Wars consisted of 415,000 lives lost both in battle and from various other causes, and 4,000,000,000 (in round figures) francs war expenditure. [1] The resultant emergence of Serbia as a significant local power was one of the causes of the much greater slaughter of World War One, which we will, presumably, be commemorating in two years time. So we remember the one historical event, but the second barely reg...

I am now separating poetry and short fiction from The Politics of Dancing and launching a new blog site Dancing on Thin Ice. I will continue to post material of this sort here first until Thin Ice develops a character of its own. You can still link to the Novel 2024/The Last Revolutionary from this blog, link below. So again, if you are, thank you for reading me.                                                                                                        ...

It was a typically British April Days filled with boredom and rain. Nothing much was happening On the day the censors came. The struggle against forgetting and the chloroform in the brain I wanted to drown out the sound of the doorbell On the day the censors came. There is always laughter and pretending Things will always be the same A day of flat melodrama The day that the censors came. . http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2012/apr/06/carers-versus-atos-image-video

Few things could be more grotesque than the decision of a lot of very rich men to run the grand prix in Bahrain. What must this say about western priorities to the average citizen in that country fighting for basic human rights, democracy and equality before the law to see a lot of fast cars driven by millionaires being run metaphorically over the bodies of those imprisoned, tortured and murdered by the regime? If you wanted a symbol of the rottenness of the current world order I can think of nothing better than a Formula One car being driven passed slum housing and a  protestor being bludgeoned. John Yates the disgraced ex Metropolitan copper, whom I could not possibly accuse of being bent, but would draw your attention to his testimony before the Leveson enquiry, is currently advising the Bahrain government on police reform! (I kid you not). He stated that he felt safer in Bahrain than in London , well he has certainly placed a great deal of sea water between himself and Opera...

For all its attendant difficulties, frustrations and occasional crises, writing anything is, comparatively speaking, the easy part. Once finished the work must be read and you must then wait for the requested feedback, this is, not to put too fine a point on it, torture. The longer it takes to receive feedback, the gloomier the writer** becomes, dark thoughts begin to cloud the mind. It’s too long, it’s too short, it’s too serious, too flippant, too dark and gloomy, too light and frivolous, the permutations are endless all coalescing into a single solid reality, it is in fact no good. By the time he comes to receive feedback the writer now will have reached such a state of nervous breakdown that to the question, well what do you think, only one word will do, marvellous. “I thought it was marvellous!” No deviation from this interpretation should be made, e.g. “I thought the end was particularly good. WHAT, you didn’t like the beginning?” No, no the beginning was good.” So you th...

There is a silly argument always used when seeking to attack privacy as part of the current culture of surveillance and the steady and unrelenting attack on our civil liberties, it goes along the lines of ‘if you've got nothing to hide what are you afraid of?’ My response to this is that if you have got nothing to hide, nothing you would prefer to keep private, you have led a shallow and wholly insubstantial life. P G Wodehouse once reflected if you sent the following telegram to a random group of individuals: - ‘All is discovered. Flee,’ nine out of ten would pack up and leave the country. It is the stuff of life, it is what we do, it comes in a package marked ‘the human condition,’ we make mistakes, do things we are ashamed off, hold discreditable thoughts; we lust, we envy and stoop to low cunning. When Jesus said “Let him without sin cast the first stone,” for once, at least, he knew what he was talking about. And still the assault on civil liberties goes on, this...

The UK Chancellor(Finance Minister) George Osbourne says that he is shocked, shocked to find out that the top earners in the UK are involved in widespread tax avoidance.   Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.

On Newsnight last week the blustering Galloway sought to present himself as a supporter of the Syrian people, portraying his support for the Assad regime as part of ancient history. He got away with it as a consequence of the intervention of Diane Abbot. Consequently in the interest of furthering public knowledge I reproduce e-mails between Mr Galloway and Bouthaina Shaaban who serves as media adviser to Assad. These are e-mails that Mr Galloway thought would never see the light of day. (Errors of spelling and grammar have not been corrected). The following is the original correspondence between George Galloway and Bouthaina Shaaban: From: b.shaaban@mopa.gov.sy Sent: Sun 15/08/10 6:30 PM To: buthainak1@hotmail.co.uk Fwd: VivaPalestina5 convoy to Gaza  Your Excellency dear Ambassador and honourable lady Dr Shaaban, Assalam o Aleukum. Thank you for your beautiful reply. I knew that I could rely on you and the last Arab country in this historic endeavour. Given the shortness of t...

I have mice, or possibly a mouse, though are not mice like men, in that, as Aristotle observed, of men that is, they are political animals, only truly themselves in sociable communion with fellow men, or in the case of mice, fellow mice. But enough of Aristotle as he is a) dead, his troubles are over and b) to the best of my knowledge he did not have mice. Now I currently weigh, much to my great chagrin, 75kg, that is just shy of 12 stone in old money. I do not know what your average fully grown mice weighs but I would hazard a guess that it is considerably less, yet when confronted with one of these creatures I am filled with panic, dread, apprehension, I have the creeps, the heebie-jeebies, deep disquietude, Mr Roget himself has trouble keeping up with the verbal description of my fears. All of this is particularly perplexing given that my DNA is a mere cigarette paper away from being that of a cave man, hunter gatherer, tiger wrestler. Unless of course my ancestor himself was...

The election of George Galloway, with a surprisingly large majority to the Bradford West seat provided a surreal end to what had been an extraordinarily surreal week. Albeit an extremely unpleasant one; he missed being a bad April fool’s day joke by just two days. The overwhelming sensation I get on seeing Mr Galloway is a desire to pour buckets of shit over his head and this is not a temptation I feel any great compulsion to fight. However, wearily once again we must have to deal with this thoroughly odious man. Polly Toynbee, a woman for whom I have a great deal of time, described him, mistakenly, as being a great orator and debater. I guess much depends on what constitutes great oratory, were Hitler or Mussolini great orators? Well both had the capacity to inflame the masses so one may need to concede that point, though he is hardly an orator in the tradition of Nye Bevan or Michael Foot, both of whom combined oratory with considerable wit and in the latter’s case erudition. But ...