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...